LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  Of 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


THE 


NEW-ENGLAND  TRAGEDIES 


IN  PROSE. 


BY 
ROWLAND    H.   ALLEN. 


I.     THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 
II.     THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 


BOSTON: 
NICHOLS    AND   NOYES. 

1869. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1868,  by 

ROWLAND  H.   ALLEN, 
In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


GEO.  C.  RAND  &  AVERY, 

STEREOTYPERS  AND    PRINTERS, 

3  CORNHILL,  BOSTON. 


PREFACE. 


THE  verse  of  Longfellow  has  been  inspired  again 
by  the  Muse  of  History.  His  theme  is  not  a 
sportive  one.  The  hand  which  has  been  wont  to 
charm  us  with  its  blithe  and  joyous  play,  in  this  new 
motion  sets  ten  thousand  hearts  athrob  to  the  cadences 
of  complaint.  Yet  our  beloved  poet  does  not  disown 
himself.  Ever  and  anon  this  minor  melody  gives 
way  to  the  bright-toned,  familiar  calls  of  charity  and 
candor. 

To  such  laments  for  the  two  faults  of  the  Fathers, 
we  will  listen  without  repining ;  for  we  can  foster  the 
silent  hope,  meanwhile,  that  the  next  strain  we  hear 
will  be  one  of  noble  praise  for  their  grand  and  myriad 
virtues. 

Till  then  we  shall  be  curious  to  know  how  much  is 
fact,  and  how  much  fancy,  in  the  latest  work  of  the 
"  Laureate  of  America." 

MOUNT  BKLLINGHAM,  November,  1868. 


I. 

THE    COMING   OF  THE   QUAKERS. 


THE 

NEW-ENGLAND   TRAGEDIES 
IN  PROSE. 


I. 

THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

JOHN  ENDICOTT  had  the  heart  of  a  prince. 
He  "came  over  to  governe."  He  led  the 
sturdy  band  that  conquered  from  the  domain  of  the 
forests  the  first  free  State  of  New  England.  And 
he  "  was  a  fit  instrument  to  begin  this  wildernesse 
work."  From  his  little  ship,  "The  Abigail,"  he 
leaped  upon  the  rocks  of  Naumkeak,  less  than 
eight  years  after  "The  Mayflower"  anchored  in 
Plymouth  Bay.  Three  or  four  Englishmen  only  had 
ventured  before  that  into  the  region  around  Cape 
Ann.  They  had  fishing  and  trading  posts  there, 
but  could  hardly  be  said  to  have  homes.  They 
were,  however,  jealous  of  their  rights  ;  and  conten- 
tion quickly  kindled  against  the  strangers.  But 


8          THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

the  new  leader  was  "  loving  as  well  as  austere ; " 
and  he  dealt  so  gently  with  this  affair  that  in  a 
little  while  it  issued  in  joyful  peace.  It  changed 
the  name  of  that  place  to  Salem.  The  English 
residents  now  numbered  about  "  fiftie  or  sixtie  per- 
sons." Vast  woods  towered  around  them  in  lofty 
and  unbroken  colonnades.  But  Endicott  was  built 
for  a  pioneer.  His  stalwart  arm  laid  low  many  a 
monarch  of  the  primeval  trees,  and  his  hearty  voice 
cheered  on  his  men  as  they  advanced  into  the 
unknown  gloom.  They  cut  out  roadways,  built 
bridges  across  the  streams,  and  cleared  off  the 
virgin  soil,  till,  in  the  quaint  language  of  the  day, 
"  they  began  to  sett  up  ploughing." 

Early  letters  were  sent  to  England,  where  the 
chartered  company  still  remained ;  Endicott  being 
the  only  original  patentee  who  had  come  to  America. 
The  patent  of  the  Company  of  Massachusetts  Bay 
included  all  that  part  of  New  England  stretching 
from  three  miles  north  of  the  Merrimack  to  three 
miles  south  of  the  Charles  River,  and  "  from  the 
Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  Ocean."  "The  Planter's 
Plea,"  printed  in  1630,  speaking  of  these  early  let- 
ters, says,  "  The  good  report  of  Capt.  Endicott's 
government,  and  the  increase  of  the  colony,  began 
to  awaken  the  spirits  of  some  persons  not  formerly 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.         9 

engaged."  They  were  so  "awakened,"  that,  in  June 
of  the  same  year,  the  whole  company  with  its  court 
and  charter  transferred  itself  to  the  New  World. 
This  was  "the  great  arrival,"  amounting,  altogether, 
to  "  eleven  shipps  "  and  fifteen  hundred  souls. 

Gov.  Winthrop,  by  appointment  from  England, 
superseded  Gov.  Endicott.  We  do  not  hear  from 
him  one  murmur  of  complaint  at  the  loss  of  his 
well-earned  honors.  He  might  have  pointed  to 
the  records  of  the  Court,  which  testified,  that  "  in 
consideration  of  his  meritt,  worth,  and  good  desert 
—  by  erreccon  of  hands,"  he  had  been  confirmed 
in  his  office  once  and  again.  He  might  have  re- 
called those  two  lone  years  of  wise  and  valiant  toil 
for  which  Dr.  Bentley  says,  that,  "  above  all  others, 
he  deserves  the  name  of  the  Father  of  New  Eng- 
land." But  not  a  lisp  of  this  is  uttered.  The  first 
governor  of  Massachusetts  could  obey  as  well  as 
command ;  and,  through  all  the  administration  of 
his  gifted  and  saintly  rival,  he  was  his  firm  support- 
er and  most  sympathizing  friend.  Winthrop  died 
in  1649  j  and  from  that  time,  until  his  own  death  in 
1665,  Endicott  was  at  the  head  of  affairs.  He 
held  the  highest  office  in  the  Commonwealth  for 
sixteen  different  years,  —  a  longer  period  than  any 
other  governor  under  the  original  charter. 


io       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

During  the  more  retired  portion  of  his  life,  he 
cultivated  with  great  enthusiasm  and  taste  his 
"  Orchard  Farm."  The  farm  was  situated  three 
miles  from  Salem  Town.  It  became  after  a  few 
years  the  most  beautiful  spot  in  America.  On 
three  sides,  its  sunny  slopes  descended  to  the  waves 
of  the  Atlantic.  The  mansion-house  crowned  a 
little  eminence  near  by.  That  was  the  home  of 
hospitality  and  love.  By  the  most  diligent  inquiry 
we  cannot  find  that  there  was  ever  any  discord  in 
the  family.  As  an  historical  fact,  the  eldest  son 
John  cherished  a  filial  and  submissive  spirit.  He 
married  Elizabeth  Howchin,  and  would  have 
courted  only  a  pretty  fancy  had  he  doted  on  Edith 
Christison.  The  lord  of  our  manor  dwelt  with 
dignity  on  his  elegant  estate.  He  used  to  make 
his  journeys  to  and  fro  always  by  water.  From 
the  point  at  which  he  fastened  his  shallop,  an 
avenue,  overhung  with  plum-trees  and  grape-vines, 
led  up  to  his  very  door.  He  was  a  leader  in  the 
agriculture  of  the  colony.  One  time,  he  was  tardy 
at  the  General  Court.  The  excuse  he  forwarded 
was  this,  "  He  could  not  come  up  until  the  corne 
be  sett."  In  1648,  he  sold  to  William  Trask  five 
hundred  apple-trees  for  two  hundred  acres  of  land ! 
In  his  will,  dated  1650,  he  says,  "I  give  to  my 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.        11 

dear  and  loving  wife  Elizabeth  all  my  farm  called 
'  Orchard,'  and  ye  orchards,  nurseries,  fruit-trees, 
gardens,  and  fences  thereunto  pertaining."  The 
traces  of  his  labor  here  have  disappeared.  But  one 
venerable  pear-tree,  which  he  planted  with  his  own 
hand  two  hundred  years  ago,  still  battles  the  storms 
of  winter,  and  greets  the  gentler  gales  of  summer. 
It  is  a  monument  to  his  horticultural  zeal. 

Before  Endicott  had  emigrated  to  America,  he 
bore  the  title  of  captain.  He  was  a  soldier  to  the 
end  of  his  life.  He  was"  early  appointed  Major- 
general  of  the  military  forces  in  all  the  planta- 
tion. Those  prompt,  stern  ways  which  in  after- 
years  he  carried  too  far,  perhaps,  into  the  civil 
affairs  he  administered,  were  acquired  in  the  midst 
of  arms,  and  on  the  perilous  edge  of  battle.  One 
renowned  event  must  not  be  forgotten.  The  royal 
banner  used  by  the  colonial  troops  bore  upon  its 
folds  the  crimson  cross  of  St.  George.  It  was  a 
relic  of  papal  idolatry.  The  Puritan  warrior  could 
not  brook  it.  And  one  day  before  they  started  on 
an  expedition,  with  his  own  keen  sword  he  cut  it 
out  bodily.  This  daring  act  drew  upon  him  the 
wrath  of  the  king.  Says  a  careful  author,  "  It  was 
the  first  blow  struck  in  America  in  defiance  of  the 
royalty  of  England."  It  would  have  cost  him  his 


12       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

life  had  it  not  been  for  the  thunders  of  rebellion  at 
home,  which  at  that  time  burst  upon  the  head  of 
Charles  the  First.  All  the  chief  men  of  the  colony 
agreed  in  feeling  with  Endicott ;  "  the  only  dif- 
ference being,"  says  Mr.  Felt,  "  that  he  manifested 
his  opinion  in  deed,  while  they  retained  theirs  in 
secret."  The  trusty  blade  with  which  this  memora- 
ble deed  was  done  is  still  preserved  as  a  fine  heir- 
loom among  his  descendants. 

Mr.  Endicott  "  was  a  very  virtuous  gentleman," 
are  the  neat  words  of  the  annalist  of  that  day, 
"  and  greatly  beloved  of  the  most  as  he  well  de- 
served." He  was  a  rigorous  magistrate  ;  but,  as  he 
venerated  justice  with  his  whole  soul,  he  was  cer- 
tainly a  good  one.  "  God  sifted  a  whole  nation,  that 
he  might  send  choise  grain  over  into  this  wilder- 
ness." Was  there  a  choicer  spirit  that  his  ?  He 
came  to  America  from  the  impulse  of  heartfelt 
religion.  "  Whatever  may  have  been  the  object  of 
others,"  is  the  claim  of  his  biographer,  "  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  his  was  the  establishment  of  a 
church  where  he  might  enjoy  Christ  and  his  ordi- 
nances in  their  primitive  purity."  The  poet  of  the 
company  wrote  for  him  this  rare  God-speed  :  — 

"  Strong,  valiant  John,  wilt  thou  march  on,  and  take  up  sta- 
tion first  ? 

Christ  called  hath  thee  :  his  souldier  be,  and  faile  not  of  thy 
trust." 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.        13 

"  Upon  the  account  of  religion,"  says  the  "  Plea," 
the  whole  company  sought  an  asylum  here,  "  where 
they  could  enjoy  the  liberty  of  their  own  persua- 
sion, without  disturbing  the  peace  of  the  kingdom, 
and  without  offence  to  others  not  like-minded  with 
themselves."  Their  hearts  glowed  with  the  hope 
of  planting  a  pure  gospel  amid  the  silent  groves 
of  America.  The  first  official  letters  from  Matthew 
Cradock,  president  of  the  Company  in  England, 
to  Endicott,  then  just  "  setting  his  corne,"  in  the 
little  glades  of  the  woods,  contained  this  admonition, 
"  We  trust  you  will  not  be  unmindful  of  the  main 
end  of  our  plantation,  by  endeavoring  to  bring  the 
Indians  to  the  knowledge  of  the  gospel."  .  Among 
the  articles  voted  "to  provide  to  send  for  New 
England  "  are,  "  Ministers,  the  Patent  under  seal,  a 
Seal,  Men  skilled  in  making  of  pitch,  of  salt,"  &c. 
The  seal  of  the  colony  was  an  Indian,  standing 
erect,  with  an  arrow  in  his  right  hand,  encircled 
with  the  motto,  "  Come  over  and  help  us."  If  any 
of  the  "  salvages  "  claimed  a  right  to  the  land, 
"  they  were  to  purchase  their  tytle,  that  they 
might  avoid  the  least  scruple  of  intrusion."  The 
Puritans  resorted  to  every  expedient,  that,  with  in- 
defeasible, honor  they  might  make  "  the  holy  experi- 
ment." 


14       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

And  ministers  were  sent,  men  of  renown.  A 
church  was  formed  in  Salem,  Aug.  6,  1629,  —  the 
first  church  formed  in.  America,  the  Plymouth 
church  having  crossed  the  ocean  ready-made.  Mr. 
Endicott's  early  pastor  and  spiritual  father,  Rev. 
Mr.  Skelton,  became  "teacher."  The  company 
that  sailed  with  Winthrop,  after  barely  touching  at 
Salem,  coasted  along  the  curving  bay  for  a  more 
commodious  place.  They  landed  on  the  north 
bank  of  Charles  River.  There  they  decided  to 
build  their  homes,  where  now  is  the  city  of  Charles- 
town.  By  them  a  second  church  was  constituted 
July  30,  1630.  But,  ere  long,  the  beautiful  penin- 
sula of  Shawmut  allured  them  across  the  stream. 
Nearly  all  moved  thither ;  and  there  they  laid  the 
foundations  on  which  rapidly  arose  the  metropolis 
of  New  England.  It  received  the  name  of  Bos- 
ton, in  honor  of  the  distinguished  John  Cotton, 
who  came  from  Boston,  England.  For  twenty-one 
years,  John  Cotton  had  been  vicar  of  St.  Botolph's 
Church,  one  of  the  most  imposing  cathedrals  of 
the  realm.  The  lantern  of  its  tower  was  two  hun- 
dred and  eighty  feet  above  the  ground,  —  a  beacon 
that  could  be  seen  by  mariners  far  at  sea.  In  con- 
sequence of  this  fact,  St.  Botolph  was  considered 
the  patron  saint  of  sailors.  It  was  said  that  "  the 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.        15 

lamp  there  ceased  to  burn  when  Cotton  became  a 
shining  light  in  the  wilderness  of  New  England." 
He  exchanged  the  grandeur  of  such  an  edifice  for 
the  pulpit  of  a  little  building  in  the  woods,  thatched 
with  straw,  and  walled  with  mud.  This  original 
structure  stood  on  State  Street,  then  King  Street, 
where  now  is  the  Merchants'  Exchange.  In  1640, 
it  was  replaced  by  a  superior  house,  built  of  wood, 
on  the  west  side  of  Washington  Street,  not  far 
south  of  Court  Street,  then  named  Queen  Street. 
This  was  the  church  which  afterwards  resounded 
with  the  sermons  of  John  Norton  and  the  outcries 
of  the  Quakers. 

When  Mr.  Cotton,  "  the  Nestor  of  New  Eng- 
land," was  on  his  death-bed,  his  despairing  parish- 
ioners implored  him  to  name  a  successor.  He  fell 
into  a  troubled  sleep  :  in  it  he  dreamed  that  he  saw 
Mr.  Norton  of  Ipswich,  riding  into  Boston  on  a 
snow-white  horse.  His  waking  thought  he  was  con- 
vinced could  be  no  better  than  that.  Mr.  Norton 
was  his  unfaltering  appointment.  He  was  called 
thereafter,  "The  falling  mantle  of  the  rising 
prophet."  John  Norton  was  a  devoted  preacher. 
The  maxim  of  his  life  was  this,  "  Christ  evidently 
set  forth  is  divine  eloquence."  Yet  he  had  to  con- 
tend with  a  "  natural  inclination  to  gayety  !  "  He 


1 6       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

was  once  addicted  to  excessive  card-playing,  but 
gave  it  up  upon  the  admonition  of  a  servant  in  his 
father's  house.  When  at  length  he  left  his  county 
in  England,  "  an  ancient  man  said  he  believed 
there  was  not  more  grace  and  excellence  in  all 
Essex  than  what  Mr.  Norton  had  carried  away." 
The  master  of  his  college  wished  him  to  accept  a 
fellowship  in  Cambridge,  and  his  wealthy  uncle  de- 
sired to  buy  for  him  a  valuable  benefice ;  but  he 
declined  them  both  for  a  simpler  worship  here. 
By  nature  he  was  a  peacemaker.  Through  his 
kindly  intervention,  grave  hostilities  were  prevented, 
that  were  likely  to  pass  between  "  our  people  and 
the  Dutch  at  Manhatoes"  (Manhattan).  At  one 
time  there  was  imminent  danger  of  a  break  between 
the  civil  and  religious  orders.  He  preached,  at  a 
critical  hour,  the  "  Thursday  Lecture  ; "  taking  for 
his  theme  Ex.  iv.  27,  where  Aaron  met  Moses  in  the 
mount,  and  kissed  him.  So  clear  and  persuasive 
was  his  proof  that  there  were  reciprocal  duties  to 
be  rendered,  that  the  whole  danger  vanished  at 
once,  and  harmony  was  restored  to  their  councils. 
He  was  famed  for  his  scholarship ;  and  his  elegant 
Latin  crossed  the  ocean  again  and  again,  in  answer 
to  knotty  questions  from  Dutch  and  English  divines. 

"  For  he  a  rope  of  sand  could  twist 
As  tough  as  learned  Sarbonist." 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.        17 

In  the  "  Magnalia  "  of  Cotton  Mather,  we  read 
that  "  he  had  a  neater  style  than  most  men ;  but  he 
desired  to  furnish  himself  adpugnam,  rather  than  ad 
pompam."  Thomas  Shepherd,  his  life-long  friend, 
contrasted  him  with  the  schoolmen  to  their  disad- 
vantage. 

"  Dull  souls  their  tapers  burn  exceeding  dim : 
They  might  to  school  again  to  learn  of  him." 

He  was  reckoned  by  President  Styles  among  the 
first  quaternion  of  New  England,  "who  were  equal 
to  the  first  characters  in  theology  in  all  Chris- 
tendom and  in  all  ages."  But,  says  a  modern  de- 
pictor,  "  his  tenets  surpassed  in  terror  even  those 
of  the  celebrated  Calvin  !  "  His  temper  was  chol- 
eric ;  and,  although  it  did  not  make  him  irascible,  it 
gave  a  certain  impetuosity  to  his  thought,  and  led 
him  to  affirm  that  there  were  errors  that  could  only 
be  combated  "  with  the  holy  tactics  of  the  civil 
sword."  But  his  most  renowned  gift  was  an  unri- 
valled excellence  in  prayer.  His  whole  soul  seemed 
then  to  be  aglow  and  aloft.  Young  divines  used 
to  resort  to  him  as  an  example.  So  affluent  and 
becoming  were  the  holy  thoughts  he  cherished,  that 
sometimes  for  an  hour  together  he  continued  his 
address  to  God,  without  weariness  to  himself  or 


1 8       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

those  around  him.  One  aged  man  from  Ipswich 
used  "  ordinarially  "  to  come  on  foot  to  Boston, 
a  distance  of  thirty  miles,  to  be  present  at  the 
Thursday  Lecture.  He  said,  "  It  was  worth  a 
great  journey  to  unite  in  one  of  Mr.  Norton's 
prayers." 

And  the  influence  of  such  lives  as  these  pervaded 
the  Puritan  community.  "  I  have  lived,"  was  the 
testimony  of  Nathaniel  Ward,  the  author  of  "  The 
Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,"  "  in  a  colony  of  many 
thousand  English,  almost  these  twelve  years,  and 
am  held  a  very  sociable  man  ;  yet  I  may  consid- 
erately say  I  never  heard  but  one  oath  sworn,  nor 
never  saw  one  man  drunk,  in  all  that  time."  A 
book  bearing  the  date  1643  affirms,  "that  one  may 
live  there  from  year  to  year,  and  not  see  a  drunkard, 
or  hear  an  oath,  or  meet  a  beggar."  "  This  re- 
markable private  morality,"  thought  Sir  James 
Mackintosh,  "  is  worthy  of  attention,  especially  in 
connection  with  the  creeds  they  professed."  There 
were,  indeed,  profane  and  sottish  men,  for  there 
were  statute  laws  against  them ;  no  stricter  laws, 
however,  than  there  are  to-day,  than  there  ought  to 
be  everywhere.  Education  had  already  begun  to 
root  itself  in  the  soil  of  fair  Harvard.  It  was  fos- 
tered by  care-taking  hands.  Industry  and  trade 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.   19 

also  flourished  with  the  vigor  of  youth.  Their  do- 
minion over  nature  widened  and  improved. 

"  Thus  to  men  cast  in  that  heroic  mould 
Came  empire  such  as  Spaniard  never  knew, 
Such  empire  as  beseems  the  just  and  true  ; 
And  at  the  last,  almost  unsought,  came  gold." 

This  was  the  happy  land,  —  John  Endicott  in  the 
chair  of  state,  and  John  Norton  in  the  leading  pul- 
pit, and  Christian  citizens  in  every  post  of  duty,  — 
this  was  the  land  so  soon  to  shudder  beneath  the 
fatal  tread  of  a  dreadful  mistake. 

Religion  and  laws  were  closely  intertwined  in  the 
Puritan  community :  the  government  felt  itself 
bound  to  expatriate  every  disorderly  person,  as 
much  as  the  church  was  bound  to  excommunicate 
him.  They  were  like  a  household.  They  had 
purchased  their  territory  for  a  home.  It  was  no 
El  Dorado :  it  was  their  Mount  of  Sion.  With  im- 
mense toil  and  unspeakable  denials,  they  had 
rescued  it  from  the  wild  woods  for  the  simple  pur- 
pose that  they  might  have  a  place  for  themselves 
and  their  children  to  worship  God  undisturbed. 
They  knew  nothing  of  toleration.  They  had  not 
thought  of  that,  nor  had  the  thought  of  it  hardly 
entered  the  world.  Their  right  to  shut  the  door 


2O       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

against  intruders  seemed  to  them  as  undoubted 
and  absolute  as  their  right  to  breath  the  air  around 
them.  The  coming  of  the  Quakers  was  to  put  the 
validity  of  this  right  to  a  final  test.  At  length  it 
was  abandoned ;  but  not  until  these  devoted  fields 
had  been  the  scene  of  the  first  tragedy  of  New 
England. 

The  people  called  Quakers  at  the  present  day 
possess  in  a  high  degree  the  respect  of  mankind. 
They  are  known  for  the  virtues  of  benevolence  and 
peace.  Their  little  oddities  of  habit  and  speech 
hardly  provoke  remark.  The  gentle  spirits  of  Penn 
and  Barclay,  the  second  founders  of  the  sect,  seem 
to  have  passed  into  the  entire  body.  They  are  mild 
in  their  deportment,  and  leaders  in  every  reform. 
Clarkson  and  Hopper,  Elizabeth  Fry  and  John 
Bright,  are  the  foremost  names  in  the  philanthro- 
pic movements  of  the  age.  There  is  one  also, 
dwelling  on  the  banks  of  the  Merrimack,  whose  calm 
brow  wears  a  chaplet  woven  by  the  shackled  hands 
of  all  the  world.  It  crowns  him  also  a  true  laureate 
of  America.  He  has  not  yet  chosen  for  the 
subject  of  his  song  the  errors  of  his  ancestry.  But, 
although  such  is  their  lofty  excellence  to-day,  "  sel- 
dom," says  Palfrey,  "  have  enthusiasts  been  more 
coarse,  more  unfriendly,  more  wild  and  annoying, 
than  the  early  Friends." 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.   21 

There  were,  however,  no  excesses  that  could 
justify,  even  should  they  palliate,  the  cruelties  with 
which  they  were  received.  Cotton  Mather  said, 
"  If  any  man  will  appear  in  vindication  of  them, 
let  him  do  as  he  pleases ;  for  my  part  I  will 
not."  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  more  severe 
laws  against  them  were  passed  with  great  difficulty, 
and,  soon  after  the  tumult  in  which  they  were  exe- 
cuted, were  regarded  with  universal  regret.  But 
the  sole  aim  of  them,  we  must  remember,  was  to 
exclude  the  Quakers,  and  not  to  torment  them. 
And  says  Mr.  Bancroft,  a  great  friend  of  the  sect, 
"  Prohibiting  the  arrival  of  Quakers  was  not  perse- 
cution, and  banishment  is  a  term  hardly  to  be  used 
of  one  who  has  not  acquired  a  home.  When  a 
pauper  is  sent  to  his  native  town,  he  is  not  called  an 
exile."  Now,  the  Puritans  disclaimed  the  right  to 
sit  in  judgment  on  the  opinions  of  others.  They 
denied  that  they  persecuted  for  conscience'  sake. 
"  Non  qua  errones  sed  qua  turbones,"  was  the  rule 
that  they  proclaimed.  They  believed  that  "  here- 
ticide  was  not  an  evangelical  way  for  extinguishing 
heresies."  Mr.  Norton,  the  exponent  of  their 
sterner  thoughts,  himself  asserted  that  neither 
Quakers  nor  others  ought  to  be  punished  for  their 
consciences ;  that  the  law  could  take  hold  only  of 


22   THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

their  outward  acts,  and  that  only  when  they  were 
subversive  of  the  good  order  of  the  land.  And 
brave  old  Roger  Clap,  commander  of  the  Boston 
Castle  in  1665,  wrote  in  his  diary,  concerning  the 
law  that  expelled  Quakers  from  the  jurisdiction  on 
pain  of  death,  "  The  reason  for  that  law  was,  be- 
cause God's  people  could  not  worship  the  true  and 
living  God  in  our  public  assemblies  without  being 
disturbed  by  them.  Some  of  them  presumed  to 
return,  to  the  loss  of  their  lives  for  breaking 
that  law  which  was  made  for  our  peace  and 
safety." 

Such  was  the  plainly-uttered  theory  of  their 
proceedings.  They  committed  their  woful  error 
in  the  misjudgment  of  facts.  Their  fears  were 
overdrawn.  They  magnified  eccentricities  into 
crimes,  and  regarded  what  was  simply  annoying  as 
a  solemn  danger.  In  the  riot  of  swift  events,  their 
practice  often  outran  their  principles ;  and,  in  the 
firm  belief  that  New  England  was  a  theocracy, 
they  were  not  guiltless  of  the  very  wrongs  from 
which  they  had  fled. 

The  first  notice  of  the  Quakers  in  Massachusetts 
was  an  order  of  the  General  Court  of  1656,  ap- 
pointing a  "  publick  day  of  humiliation  to  seek  the 
face  of  God  —  in  behalf  of  our  native  country,  with 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       23 

reference  to  the  abounding  of  errors,  especially 
those  of  the  Ranters  and  Quakers."  Hardly  was 
the  day  passed  when  a  vessel  from  Barbadoes,  "  The 
Swallow,"  Simon  Kempthorn  captain,  arrived  in 
"  the  Road  before  Boston,"  with  two  Quaker  women 
on  board,  —  Ann  Austin  and  Mary  Fisher.  Officers 
visited  the  vessel,  and,  searching  their  trunks, 
found  about  a  hundred  Quaker  books.  The 
Council  thereupon,  "tendering  the  preservation 
of  the  peace  and  truth,"  did  order,  — 

First,  that  all  such  corrupt  books  be  burned  in 
the  market-place  by  the  common  executioner. 

Second,  that  the  said  Ann  and  Mary  be  kept  in 
close  prison  until  such  time  as  they  be  transferred 
out  of  the  country. 

Third,  that  the  said  Simon  Kempthorn  is  en- 
joined to  transport,  or  cause  to  be  transported,  the 
said  persons  from  hence  to  Barbadoes,  from  whence 
they  came  ;  and,  for  the  more  effectual  performance 
thereof,  he  is  to  give  security  in  a  bond  of  one  hun- 
dred pounds  sterling. 

While  they  were  in  jail,  a  board  was  nailed  up 
before  the  window,  that  no  one  might  hold  com- 
munication with  them.  Nicholas  Upsall,  an  aged 
citizen,  was  deeply  interested  in  their  behalf,  and 
purchased  food  for  them  every  week,  "lest  they 


24       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

should   be   starved."     After   five   weeks'   confine- 
ment, they  re-embarked  for  Barbadoes. 

The  maiden  Mary  continued  her  romantic  travels. 
"  Being  moved  of  the  Lord  "  to  deliver  a  message 
to  the  Sultan  of  Turkey,  she  entered  upon  a  jour- 
ney towards  the  Sublime  Porte.  She  toiled  along  by 
land  from  the  coasts  of  Morea  to  the  city  of  Adri- 
anople.  This  part  of  her  journey,  about  six  hun- 
dred miles,  she  made  alone,  "  without  abuse  or  in- 
jury." At  Adrianople,  she  found  the  grand  vizier 
encamped  with  all  his  army.  She  discovered  means 
of  announcing  her  arrival,  which  was  done  in. these 
words  :  "  An  English  woman  hath  a  message  from 
the  great  God  to  the  great  Turk."  She  was  soon 
invited  to  his  tent,  and  with  the  aid  of  three  inter- 
preters "  uttered  her  mind."  He  listened  "  with 
much  gravity  and  soberness,"  and  offered  her  a 
guard  for  her  further  progress.  She  declined  it, 
and  departed  for  Constantinople  alone,  "  whitherto 
she  came  without  the  least  hurt  or  scoff."  In 
George  Bishope's  book,  which  'was  published 
in  1 66 1,  with  the  title,  "  New  England  judged 
by  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord,"  Mary  was  said  to 
fare  better  among  the  heathens  than  among  the 
Christians,  "  to  the  glory  of  the  great  Turk,  and 
his  great  renown,  and  your  everlasting  shame  and 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       25 

contempt !  "  The  Orientals  regarded  lunatics  as 
inspired:  therefore  they  overwhelmed  the  Quak- 
ers with  prodigious  quantities  of  genuflections  and 
salams.  They  bowed  them  out  of  the  country, 
never  to  be  troubled  by  them  again. 

No  sooner  had  these  two  unwelcome  visitors  de- 
parted than  another  vessel,  sailing  from  London, 
brought  eight  more  Quakers  to  our  inhospitable 
shore.  Their  treatment  was  similar  to  that  of  the 
first  party.  After  eleven  weeks  of  suffering  in  the 
jail,  they  embarked  again  "  for  no  place  but  Eng- 
land." Their  behavior  was  said  to  be  "  uncivil." 
Mary  Prince  shouted  out  a  malediction  upon  the 
governor  as  he  was  going  by  the  prison  from  his 
place  of  worship :  she  also  wrote  him  a  letter  "  filled 
with  opprobrious  stuff."  The  governor  sent  for  her 
to  come  to  his  own  house.  He  had  invited  two 
ministers  to  be  present,  and,  "  with  much  tender- 
ness," they  endeavored  to  induce  her  to  desist  from 
her  extravagances.  To  this  exhortation  she  re- 
turned the  grossest  reproaches,  calling  them  "  hire- 
lings, deceivers  of  the  people,  Baal's  priests,  the 
seed  of  the  serpent,"  &c.  Such,  it  appears,  was 
their  usual  style  of  addressing  all  rulers  in  State 
and  Church. 

Thus  far,  action   against  the  Quakers  had  pro- 


26       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

ceeded  upon  the  general  law  against  heresy.  The 
emergency  seemed  to  require  some  special  legisla- 
tion. The  Federal  Commissioners  at  their  annual 
meeting,  Sept.  17, 1656,  recommended  such  legisla- 
tion to  the  four  United  Colonies.  The  General 
Court  of  Massachusetts  promptly  acted  in  the 
matter.  On  the  i4th  of  October,  the  first  law  was 
passed  against  the  Quakers.  They  are  called  "  a 
cursed  sect,  who  take  upon  them  to  speak  and  write 
blasphemous  opinions,  despising  governments, 
reviling  magistrates  and  ministers,  and  seeking  to 
turn  the  people  to  their  pernicious  ways."  The 
law  forbade  "  the  master  of  any  ship,  bark,  pink,  or 
catch,"  to  bring  Quakers  "  into  any  harbour,  creek, 
or  cove  of  the  jurisdiction,"  upon  pain  of  a  hun- 
dred pounds'  fine.  It  prohibited  the  Quakers 
themselves  from  coming  on  pain  of  immediate 
imprisonment  and  severe  castigation.  Such  was 
the  excitement  into  which  the  government  had  been 
thrown  by  the  events  of  the  summer,  that  this  law 
was  published  in  the  market-place,  and  through  the 
streets  of  Boston,  by  beat  of  the  drum.  When  it 
was  proclaimed  at  the  door  of  Nicholas  Upsall, 
"the  good  old  man,"  says  Joseph  Besse  in  his 
"Sufferings  of  the  Quakers,"  published  in  1753, 
"  grieved  in  spirit,  publically  testified  against  it," 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       27 

demanding  "that  they  take  heed  what  they  did, 
lest  they  be  found  fighters  against  God."  This 
was  considered  seditious  language ;  and  poor 
Upsall,  who  had  before  been  excommunicated 
from  the  Church,  was  now  fined  twenty  pounds, 
and  ordered  to  leave  the  country  within  a 
month.  His  fine  was  partly  abated  at  the  re- 
quest of  his  wife,  and  he  was  permitted  to  stay  in 
Sandwich  until  the  rigor  of  winter  was  passed.  He 
then  was  welcomed  "  to  a  warm  house  "  by  an  In- 
dian prince  in  Rhode  Island.  In  three  years,  he 
returned  from  his  exile,  and,  refusing  to  retract  his 
offensive  speeches,  he  was  again  remanded  to  the 
Boston  prison.  After  being  there  two  years,  "  he 
drew  so  many  persons  to  him,"  that  he  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  Castle.  Soon,  however,  permission 
was  granted  him  to  dwell  with  his  brother  in  Dor- 
chester, "  provided  he  do  not  corrupt  any  with  his 
pernicious  opinions."  This  was  the  end  of  his  sad 
persecutions,  and  here  he  ended  his  stormy  life  in 
an  eventide  of  comparative  peace. 

But  the  new  law  was  not  to  be  a  dead  letter. 
The  next  year,  1657,  Mary  Clark  left  her  husband 
and  six  children  in  London,  and  sailed  across  the 
Atlantic,  "  that  she  might  warn  these  persecutors  to 
desist  from  their  iniquity."  She  delivers  her  mes- 


28       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

sage,  is  scourged,  and  committed  to  prison  for 
twelve  weeks.  She  is  then  sent  away.  Christopher 
Holder,  one  of  the  eight  who  had  been  reshipped 
to  England,  appeared  again  in  Salem,  and  "  spoke 
a  few  words  in  meeting  after  the  priest  had  done." 
This  "  speaking  a  few  words  in  meeting"  we  shall 
find  hereafter,  was  a  most  startling  disturbance  to 
the  solemn  Puritans.  George  Fox,  previous  to  this, 
when  a  Rev.  doctor  had  preached  upon  the  theme, 

X 

"  Ho !  every  one  that  thirsteth,  come  ye,  buy  without 
money  and  without  price,"  was  "moved  of  the 
Lord  "  to  cry  out,  "  Come  down,  thou  deceiver :  dost 
thou  bid  people  to  come  to  the  waters  of  life  freely, 
and  yet  thou  takest  three  hundred  pounds  a  year 
of  them  ? "  In  the  Salem  church,  Holder  was 
"haled  back  by  the  hair  of  his  head,  and  his 
mouth  violently  stopped  with  a  glove  and  hand- 
kerchief thrust  thereinto."  The  next  day  he  was 
"had  to  Boston."  He  received  thirty  stripes, 
and  the  jailer's  custody  for  nine  weeks.  He  con- 
tinued to  disturb  public  worship  in  various  places, 
suffering  repeated  imprisonments,  and  at  length  the 
loss  of  his  right  ear. 

The  law  of  1656  checked  the  influx  of  Quakers, 
but  did  not  stop  it  entirely.  It  was  amended  Oct. 
14,  1657,  to  this  effect:  "Every  one  who  know- 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.   29 

ingly  entertained  a  Quaker  should  pay  forty  shil- 
lings for  each  hour  of  hospitality.  Quaker  men, 
if  they  returned  after  the  first  expulsion,  should 
have  one  ear  cut  off;  if  they  returned  again,  they 
should  lose  the  other.  Quaker  women,  in  each 
case,  were  to  be  severely  whipped  ;  and  for  every 
Quaker,  he  or  she,  that  should  a  third  time  herein 
again  offend,  they  should  have  their  tongues  thrust 
through  with  a  hot  iron."  The  first  of  these  muti- 
lations was  inflicted  in  three  instances  only,  the 
others  not  at  all. 

The  populace  murmured  against  such  inhumani- 
ties. They  were  thrown  into  a  tumult  of  rebellion 
when  the  story  of  a  strange  outrage  burst  forth  from 
the  prison-walls.  One  William  Brend,  said  "to  be 
of  a  turbulent  spirit,  and  forward  to  abuse  men 
with  his  tongue,"  had  addressed  this  communica- 
tion to  the  magistrates  :  "  The  Lord  of  this  Campe, 
whom  ye  world  derides,  persecutes,  and  in  scorne 
calls  Quakers,  will  by  them  dash  ye  nations  to 
pieces ;  therefore  repent  —  for  opposing  ye  Lord 
in  any  of  his  servants  by  fines,  imprisonments,  and 
banishments.  This  is  a  message  sent  from  ye 
most  high  God  of  heaven  and  earth  into  New  Eng- 
land ;  though  you  will  not  believe  it,  you  shall 
know  it."  This  poor  enthusiast,  according  to 


3<3       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

Quaker  authorities,  endured  terrific  abuses  from 
the  "  inhumane  gaoler."  Though  "  a  man  in  years, 
he  put  him  in  irons,  neck  and  heels  so  close 
together  that  there  was  no  more  room  left  between 
each  than  for  the  lock  that  fastened  them."  Thus 
he  kept  him  from  five  in  the  morning  till  after  nine 
at  night,  "  being  the  space  of  sixteen  hours."  The 
next  morning,  he  brought  him  to  the  mill  to  work. 
Brend  refused,  "  having  been  kept  five  days  with- 
out eating,  and  unmercifully  beaten  with  a  rope." 
Then  the  "  butcherly  fellow  "  "began  to  beat  anew, 
and  laid  fourscore  and  seventeen  more  blows  on 
him  ; "  so  that  his  back  and  arms  were  bruised  and 
black.  "  His  whole  flesh  had  become  a  jelly," 
and  "  his  senses  were  stopped."  -He  would  have 
died,  "  had  it  not  pleased  God  miraculously  to  heal 
him."  The  noise  of  such  brutality  flew  through 
the  town.  The  governor  sent  his  own  surgeon  to 
the  prison  to  afford  what  aid  he  could ;  and  the 
magistrates  —  for  they  feared  a  mutiny  —  "set  up 
a  paper  on  the  meeting-house  door,  and  up  and 
down  the  streets,"  declaring  their  abhorrence  of 
the  outrage,  and  promising  to  punish  the  jailer. 
"But,"  says  Besse,  "this  paper  was  soon  taken 
down  at  the  instigation  of  the  high  priest,  John 
Norton,  who  did  not  stick  to  say,  '  William  Brend 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       31 

endeavoured  to  beat  our  gospel  ordinances  black 
and  blue ;  if  he  then  be  beaten  black  and  blue,  it 
is  but  just  upon  him ;  and  I  will  appear  in  his 
behalf  that  did  so.' " 

Under  the  presidency  of  Endicott,  the  Federal 
commissioners  met  again  in  Boston,  in  1658.  It 
was  this  session  which  propounded  to  the  several 
courts  their  most  sanguinary  laws.  When  the 
court  of  Massachusetts  met,  a  memorial  was  pre- 
sented by  twenty-four  citizens,  praying  for  the  legis- 
lation they  proposed.  They  quoted  the  example 
of  other  Christian  states ;  referred  to  the  ineffect- 
ual remedies  hitherto  employed  ;  announced  the 
principle  of  se  dcfendendo ;  and,  finally,  put  the 
question,  "  whether  it  be  not  necessary,"  if  Quak- 
ers continue  to  obtrude  themselves,  "  to  punish  so 
high  incorrigibleness  in  such  and  so  many  capital 
evils  with  death." 

The  provision  of  a  threat  of  death  against  ban- 
ished persons  had  been  the  resort  of  Massachusetts 
through  a  long  course  of  years.  It  had  heretofore 
never  once  failed  of  its  object.  "  There  can  be 
no  doubt,"  says  Palfrey,  "  that  among  those  who 
favored  this  new  enactment,  there  was  a  confi- 
dent persuasion  that  the  terror  of  the  law  would 
accomplish  all  that  was  desired,  and  would  pre- 


32       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

vent  any  occasion  for  its  execution."  —  "The  ob- 
ject of  this  severity,"  says  Bancroft,  "  was  not  to 
persecute,  but  to  exclude  them." 

On  the  20th  of  October,  their  most  extreme 
measure  was  adopted.  Thenceforward,  persons 
convicted  by  special  jury  of  belonging  to  "the  per- 
nicious sect  of  Quakers  should  be  sentenced  to 
banishment,  on  pain  of  death." 

The  House  which  passed  this  implacable  act 
consisted  of  twenty-five  members.  When  it  was 
first  put  to  vote,  it  was  promptly  rejected.  Upon 
a  motion  to  reconsider,  a  long  and  excited  debate 
ensued.  At  length,  it  was  carried  in  the  affirma- 
tive, by  a  vote  of  thirteen  to  twelve.  One  voice 
was  wanting  to  avert  the  calamity.  This  fact  so 
troubled  good  Deacon  Wozel,  who  was  absent  be- 
cause of  illness,  that  "  he  got  to  the  court  weeping 
for  grief,"  and  said,  "  If  he  had  not  been  able  to 
go  [walk],  he  would  have  crept  upon  his  knees 
rather  than  such  a  law  should  pass." 

The  government  had  crossed  the  Rubicon.  It  had 
taken  a  position  which  it  could  not  abandon  with- 
out humiliation,  or  maintain  without  cruelty.  The 
court  seemed  in  some  degree  sensible  of  the  im- 
port of  their  act.  In  deference  to  the  public  senti- 
ment opposing  them,  they  voted  that  a  paper  be 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       33 

composed  and  printed  "to  manifest  the  evil  of  the 
tenets  of  the  Quakers,  and  the  danger  of  their 
practices."  This  business  was  assigned  to  "  John 
Norton,  Teacher,  of  Boston."  It  was  published 
at  the  public  charge,  and  bore  the  title,  "The 
Heart  of  New  England  Rent  at  the  Blasphemies 
of  the  Present  Generation ;  or,  A  brief  Tractate 
concerning  the  Doctrine  of  the  Quakers, "  — 
"which  doctrine,"  says  Cotton  Mather,  "was  in 
this  tract  solidly  confuted ;  and  perhaps  it  had 
been  better  if  this  had  been  all  the  confutation, 
which  I  add  because  I  will  not — I  cannot  —  make 
myself  a  vindicator  of  the  severities  that  followed." 
But  desperate  souls  were  abroad,  men  who  looked 
upon  this  menace  as  an  invitation,  and  sprang  for- 
ward at  once  to  avail  themselves  of  the  chance  of 
martyrdom.  Marmaduke  Stevenson,  a  young  man 
then  in.  Barbadoes,  heard  of  the  "  bloody  law,"  and 
took  passage  immediately  for  New  England.  He 
reached  Rhode  Island,  and  found  there  his  friend, 
William  Robinson,  to  whom,  in  the  language  of  a 
letter  from  the  cell  in  which  he  lay  condemned 
to  die,  "  the  word  of  the  Lord  had  come  expressly, 
and  commanded  me  to  pass  to  the  town  of  Bos- 
ton, my  life  to  lay  down."  —  "  After  a  little  time," 
as  a  similar  letter  asserted,  "the  word  of  the 


34       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

Lord  came  to  Marmaduke  also,  saying,  '  Go  to 
Boston  with  thy  brother,  William  Robinson."  The 
two  accordingly  went.  Mary  Dyer,  "  a  comely, 
grave  woman,  the  mother  of  several  children,"  like- 
wise was  "  moved  of  the  Lord  to  come  from  Rhode 
Island  to  make  them  a  visit."  Nicholas  Davis 
also  was  one  of  the  party.  A  delicate  little 
girl,  only  eleven  years  old,  thrilled  with  the  fine 
enthusiasm,  came  all  the  way  "  from,  her  father's 
house  in  Providence  to  bear  witness  against  your 
persecuting  spirit."  The  court  decided  that  she 
was  too  young  for  trial ;  and  a  sturdy,  kind-hearted 
judge  agreed  to  carry  her  safely  home.  The  four 
others  were  arrested,  and  straightway  banished,  on 
pain  of  death.  Nicholas  and  Mary  "  found  free- 
dome  to  depart ; "  but  the  other  two  were  "  con- 
strained in  the  love  and  power  of  the  Lord  to  try 
your  bloody  law  unto  death."  They  hovered  about 
Salem  a  few  weeks,  and  then,  in  the  midst  of  quite 
a  troop  of  Friends,  marched  into  Boston  with  un- 
faltering steps.  They  reversed  the  precept  of  the 
Master,  "  When  they  shall  persecute  you  in  one 
city,  flee  ye  into  another."  They  certainly  courted 
the  fatal  event.  Alice  Cowland,  one  who  came 
with  them,  brought  some  "  linnen,"  as  she  showed 
the  governor,  "  wherein  to  wrap  the  dead  bodies 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       35 

of  them  who  were  to  suffer."  Mary  Dyer  recpn- 
sidered  her  duty,  and  was  also  "  soon  espied  "  in 
Boston. 

Here,  then,  were  three  heroic  fanatics,  who  had 
committed  a  mortal  offence.  It  was  done  with  the 
clear  intention  of  defying  a  statute-law.  What 
ought  to  be  the  course  of  the  makers  of  that  law, 
when  driven  to  such  an  extremity  ?  Drop  it  at 
once,  we  say  ;  cast  off  your  rash  enactment ;  forbid 
the  suicide  ;  let  no  judgment  convert  a  mad-cap 
into  a  martyr's  crown.  Possibly  the  invaders  ex- 
pected this  victory  in  the  final  encounter.  Better, 
far  better,  that  they  had  obtained  it,  than  that  one 
life  should  be  lost  in  a  mere  contest  of  excited 
wills  ! 

But  those  iron  men  with  whom  they  dealt  knew 
not  how  to  bend.  The  government  felt  that  it 
could  not  yield.  John  Endicott  said  to  them  in 
the  open  court,  "  We  have  made  many  laws  to  keep 
you  from  amongst  us.  I  do  not  desire  your  death." 
He  briefly  reverted  to  the  danger  they  brought  to 
their  peace-loving  State,  and  then,  "  speaking 
faintly,"  says  Bishope,  "  as  a  man  whose  life  was 
departing  from  him,"  pronounced  the  sentence, 
"  You  shall  be  had  back  to  the  place  from  whence 
you  came,  and  from  thence  to  the  place  of  execu- 


36        THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

tion,  to   be   hanged   on   the   gallows  till  you  are 
dead." 

The  2yth  of  October,  1659,  is  a  dark  day  in  the 
calendar  of  New  England.  As  the  afternoon  began 
to  decline,  these  three  persons,  "  led  by  the  back 
way,"  because  they  "  were  afraid  of  the  fore  way, 
lest  it  should  affect  the  people  too  much;"  guarded 
by  a  band  of  two  hundred  men,  armed  with  hal- 
berds, and  by  a  troop  of  horse,  with  drums  beating 
to  drown  whatever  they  might  say  ;  "  walking  hand 
in  hand,  Mary  being  the  middlemost,"  —  took  up 
their  solemn  march  to  the  gallows.  It  stood  upon 
Boston  Common,  perhaps  beneath  the  Great  Elm. 
The  two  men,  one  after  the  other,  climbed  the  lad- 
der, and  were  hanged.  They  died  with  exalted 
hearts.  The  last  words  of  Robinson  were,  "  I  suf- 
fer for  Christ,  in  whom  I  live,  and  for  whom  I  die." 
Stevenson  said,  "  This  day  shall  we  be  at  rest  with 
the  Lord."  Mary  Dyer  then  stepped  up  the  lad- 
der. The  halter  was  put  about  her  neck ;  her  face 
was  covered  with  a  handkerchief;  she  was  just 
to  be  turned  off,  —  when  a  faint  cry  arrested  the 
hangman's  act.  It  was  this  :  "  Stop  !  stop  !  she 
is  reprieved  !  "  "A  reprieve  !  a  reprieve  !  "  was 
shouted  back  and  forth  by  a  hundred  willing  voices. 
The  execution  immediately  stopped.  But  she, 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       37 

whose  mind  was  already,  as  it  were,  in  heaven, 
stood  still,  and  said,  "  she  was  there  willing  to  suf- 
fer as  her  brethren  did,  unless  they  would  annul 
their  wicked  law."  Could  there  be  a  deeper  pathos 
than  that  ?  Her  own  son,  who  was  secretary  of 
state  in  Rhode  Island,  had  come  to  Boston  to  in- 
tercede in  her  behalf.  The  magistrates  could  not 
refuse  him  ;  and  he  bore  his  dauntless  mother  back 
to  their  home. 

At  this  point,  the  resentment  and  compassion  of 
the  people  overleaped  all  restraint,  and  burst  out  in 
ominous  threats.  The  court,  still  sitting,  felt  com- 
pelled to  justify  their  action.  Two  declarations 
were  drawn  up,  —  one  to  be  printed,  and  the  other 
to  be  sent  to  the  several  towns.  They  are  pre- 
served in  the  Massachusetts  Records.  They  plead 
the  cause  of  the  judges  in  these  words  :  "  Altho' 
the  justice  of  our  proceedings  against  William 
Robinson,  Marmaduke  Stevenson,  and  Mary  Dyer, 
supported  by  the  authority  of  this  court,  and  the 
laws  of  the  country,  and  the  laws  of  God,  may 
rather  persuade  us  to  expect  encouragement  and 
commendation  from  all  prudent  and  pious  men, 
than  convince  us  of  any  necessity  to  apologize  for 
the  same,  yet,  forasmuch  as  men  of  weaker  parts, 
out  of  pity  and  commiseration  (a  commendable 

4 


38       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

and  Christian  virtue,  yet  easily  abused,  and  sus- 
ceptible of  sinister  and  dangerous  impressions),  for 
want  of  full  information,  may  be  less  satisfied,  and 
men  of  perverse  principles  may  take  occasion 
hereby  to  calumniate  us,  and  render  us  bloody  per- 
secutors, —  to  satisfy  the  one,  and  stop  the  mouth 
of  the  other,  we  thought  it  requisite  to  declare, 
that,  about  three  years  since,  divers  persons  pro- 
fessing themselves  to  be  Quakers  .  .  .  arrived  in 
Boston,  whose  persons  were  only  secured  to  be  sent 
away  by  the  first  opportunity  without  censure  or 
punishment,  although  their  design  was  to  under- 
mine and  ruin  .  .  .  the  peace  and  order  here  estab- 
lished. Accordingly,  a  law  was  made  prohibiting 
Quakers  from  coming  into  this  jurisdiction  on  pen- 
alty of  the  house  of  correction  till  they  be  sent 
away.  Notwithstanding  which,  by  a  back  door, 
they  found  entrance ;  .  .  .  the  penalty  was  there- 
fore increased :  which  also  being  too  weak  a  defence 
against  their  impetuous  and  fanatic  fury,  a  law  was 
made,  that  such  persons  should  be  banished  on 
pain  of  death,  according  to  the  example  of  England 
in  their  provision  against  Jesuits.  .  .  .  The  consid- 
eration of  our  gradual  proceedings  will  vindicate  us 
from  the  clamorous  accusation  of  severity,  our  own 
just  and  necessary  defence  calling  upon  us  (other 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       39 

measures  failing)  to  offer  the  points  which  these  per- 
sons have  violently  and  wilfully  rushed  upon,  and 
thereby  are  become  felons  de  se,  which  might  have 
been  prevented,  and  the  sovereign  law,  salus populi, 
been  preserved.  Our  former  proceedings,  as  well 
as  the  sparing  of  Mary  Dyer  upon  an  inconsider- 
able intercession,  will  manifestly  evince  that  we  de- 
sire their  life  absent  rather  than  their  death  present." 

The  second  document  also  reviews  their  legisla- 
tion, and  then  presents  the  following  reasons  for 
insisting  upon  the  extreme  penalty  : — 

i st.  The  doctrine  of  the 'sect  destroys  the  fun- 
damental truths  of  religion. 

2d.  They  renounce  openly  the  command  of  God 
to  obey  magistrates. 

3d.  If  death  may  be  lawfully  exacted  for  breach 
of  confinement,  it  certainly  may  for  breach  of 
banishment. 

4th.  As  a  householder  may  repel  an  intruder 
with  the  sword,  so  may  a  government. 

5th.  A  parent  defends  his  family  against  a  pes- 
tiferous visitor :  thus  should  rulers  defend  their 
subjects  against  moral  contagion. 

6th.  This  is  not  the  persecution  of  Christians ; 
for  Christians,  when  persecuted  in  one  city,  flee  into 
another. 


4O        THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

This  twofold  plea  went  forth  to  the  people.  It 
was  thoughtfully  drawn,  and  indicated  truly  that 
the  court  was  not  impelled  alone  by  either 
eyeless  bigotry  or  mad  vexation.  Probably  it 
convinced  some  of  the  disaffected  :  no  doubt  it  was 
thoroughly  believed  by  the  upright  men  who  pro- 
claimed it.  Authorities  in  jurisprudence  of  the 
present  day  have  testified  that  "  they  had  upon  their 
side  that  sort  of  rigid  justice  which  proceeds  upon 
the  established  rule  that  a  perfect  right  may  be 
maintained  at  any  cost  to  the  invader."  But,  in 
answer  to  such  a  proposition,  our  hearts  affirm  that 
life  is  too  precious  a  thing  to  be  trampled  upon  by 
the  heel  of  meagre  consistency,  and  humanity  ought 
never  to  be  surrendered  to  a  principle  of  logic. 
Defeat  in  such  conditions  would  have  been  more 
noble  than  success. 

In  the  mellowed  light  of  history,  with  reference 
to  this  entire  contention,  we  can  all  see  the  truthful- 
ness of  those  ancient  verses  of  the  "  Simple  Cobbler 
of  Agawam  : " — 

"  They  seldom  lose  the  field,  but  often  win, 
That  end  their  wars  before  their  wars  begin." 

Mary  Dyer  could  not  be  at  rest.  The  next  spring 
"  she  was  moved  to  return  to  the  bloody  town  of  Bos- 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       41 

ton."  Her  husband  wrote  beseechingly  to  Endicott, 
that  he  had  not  seen  her  above  this  half-year ;  that 
she  had  journeyed  secretly  and  speedily  all  about, 
and  at  length  had  come  to  Boston.  "  Unhappy 
journey,  may  I  say,  and  woe  to  that  generation 
that  help  one  another  to  hazard  their  lives,  for  I 
know  not  what  end,  and  to  what  purpose  !  " 

Endicott  was  loath  to  condemn  her.  He  even 
crossed  his  nature  enough  to  suggest  to  her  the 
evasion  of  denying  her  identity.  There  had  been 
another  Mrs.  Dyer  in  the  Province.  But  she  would 
not  equivocate.  With  wonderful  heroism  she 
marched  to  her  fate.  When  her  sentence  was  pro- 
nounced upon  her,  she  replied,  "  I  came  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  will  of  God ;  the  last  General  Court 
desiring  you  to  repeal  your  unrighteous  laws,  and 
that  same  is  my  work  now,  and  earnest  request." 
On  the  morning  of  the  next  day,  she  was  led  forth 
a  second  time  to  the  place  of  execution.  They 
were  anxious  to  save  her.  Even  at  the  gallows 
they  delayed  the  execution  ;  and  her  life  was  offered 
her  again  and  again,  if  she  would  only  promise 
to  leave  the  jurisdiction.  "  Nay,  I  cannot,"  was 
her  constant  reply ;  for  "  in  obedience  to  the  will  of 
the  Lord  I  came,  and  in  his  will  I  abide  faithful  to 
death." 


42       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

There  was  but  one  more  victim  of  this  direful 
enactment.  A  resident  of  Barbadoes,  named 
William  Leddra,  after  repeated  disturbances  in 
Salem  and  Newbury,  and  corresponding  chastise- 
ments, upon  his  third  return  in  1661  was  brought  to 
trial  and  doomed  to  the  gallows.  He  was  charged 
him  with  contempt  for  authorities,  because  he  re- 
fused to  remove  his  hat,  and  for  saying  "  thee  "  and 
"  thou."  His  reply  was,  "  Will  you  put  me  to  death 
for  speaking  good  English,  and  for  not  putting  off 
my  clothes  ? "  —  "A  man  may  speak  treason  in  good 
English,"  was  the  sharp  response.  "  Will  you  return 
to  England  ? "  they  demanded.  "  I  have  no  busi- 
ness there,"  he  said.  Simon  Bradstreet  pointed  a 
menacing  finger  to  the  scaffold,  saying,  "  Then  you 
shall  go  there." — "Will  you  put  me  to  death  for 
breathing  the  air  of  your  jurisdiction?  I  appeal  to 
the  laws  of  England."  Says  Mr.  Chandler  in  his 
"  American  Criminal  Trials,"  "  Twenty  years  be- 
fore it  had  been  accounted  perjury  and  treason 
to  speak  of  appeals  to  the  king."  Yet,  after  this, 
he  was  offered  his  life  if  he  would  promise  to 
leave  the  Province.  Still  refusing,  he  was  con- 
signed to  his  fate.  He  wrote  to  his  friends  from 
his  prison-cell,  the  day  before  his  death,  a  letter 
full  of  pure  and  charming  sentiment.  "  The  sweet 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       43 

influences  of  the  morning  star,  distilling  into  my  in- 
nocent habitation,  have  so  filled  me  with  the  joy  of 
the  Lord,  in  the  beauty  of  holiness,  that  my  spirit 
is  as  if  it  did  not  inhabit  a  tabernacle  of  clay,  but  is 
wholly  swallowed  up  in  the  bosom  of  eternity." 
He  took  tender  leave  of  his  fellow-captives,  and 
went  to  the  gallows  in  a  gentle  and  saintly  way. 
A  stranger  in  the  crowd,  just  arrived  by  sea,  was 
smitten  with  overwhelming  pity.  He  cried  out, 
"  For  God's  sake,  take  not  away  the  man's  life,  but 
remember  Gamaliel's  counsel  to  the  Jews."  The 
captain  of  the  guard  bade  him  hold  his  peace,  and 
he  departed  in  tears.  "  All  that  will  be  Christ's 
disciples  must  take  up  the  cross,"  Leddra  mur- 
mured at  the  foot  of  the  ladder.  His  last  words 
were  the  prayer  of  lofty  resignation,  —  "  Lord 
Jesus,  receive  my  spirit." 

At  the  height  of  Leddra's  trial,  Wenlock  Christi- 
son,  another  of  the  banished,  suddenly  strode  into 
the  court,  and  took  his  stand  by  the  side  of  the 
prisoner.  His  appearance  sent  dismay  into  the 
the  minds  of  the  judges.  He  confronted  them 
with  wild  and  dreadful  words.  "  Are  not  you  the 
man  who  was  banished  on  pain  of  death  ? "  de- 
manded Endicott,  in  a  troubled  voice.  "  Yea,  I 
am,"  was  the  deep-toned  reply.  "  What  dost  thou 


44       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

here,  then  ?  "  he  said.  "  I  come  to  warn  you  that 
you  shed  no  more  innocent  blood  ;  for  the  blood 
that  you  have  shed  cries  to  the  Lord  God  for  ven- 
geance to  come  upon  you."  Endicott  was  weary 
enough  of  that  bloody  work  ;  and  here  was  another 
victim  madly  rushing  to  the  altar.  Christison  had 
suffered  much  before  this  for  his  obstinate  turbu- 
lence. It  was  thought  that  at  length  he  had  been 
effectually  dismissed.  They  committed  him  once 
again. 

After  three  months,  when  he  was  brought  to  trial, 
a  great  change  had  come  over  the  court.  At  the 
beginning  of  that  period,  they  would  have  passed 
sentence  upon  him  at  once,  without  disagreement : 
now  they  contested  the  point  for  more  than  two 
weeks.  The  governor  was  vexed  at  what  he 
thought  their  lack  of  nerve.  Hurling  something 
violently  upon  the  table,  he  said,  "  I  could  find  it  in 
my  heart  to  go  home  [to  England] ;  I  thank  God  I 
am  not  afraid  to  give  judgment."  Would  that  he 
had  been  afraid  !  The  metal  of  his  nature  was  the 
stuff  of  which  martyrs  are  made  :  it  was  not  tem- 
pered enough  for  a  martyr's  judge. 

A  majority  was  at  length  obtained  for  the  con- 
demnation, "  provided,  nevertheless,  that  if  the  said 
Christison  shall  at  any  time  before  the  execution, 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.      45 

by  writing  under  his  hand,  engage  that  he  forthwith 
depart  this  jurisdiction,  and  from  thenceforth  return 
no  more  into  it,  without  having  first  obtained  leave 
from  the  General  Court  or  Council,  he  shall  there- 
upon be  discharged."  In  the  Massachusetts  Ar- 
chives may  be  found  this  letter  :  — 

I  the  condemned  man  doe  give  forth  under  my  hand 
that  if  I  may  have  my  libarty,  I  have  freedome  to  depart  this 
Jurisdiction,  and  I  know  not  y*  ever  I  shall  com  into  it  any 

more. 

WINLOCK  CHRISTISON. 
from  y6  goal  in  Boston, 

y6  yth  day  of  y6  4th  mo.  1661. 

But  there  were  signs  that  the  fury  of  the  conflict 
was  nearly  spent,  that  the  wild  tide  of  fanaticism 
had  begun  to  turn.  Strong  wills  had  been  pitted 
against  each  other  in  a  desperate  encounter.  The 
Quaker  had  conquered.  His  gallant  fortitude  could 
not  be  overawed.  The  chief  men  of  Boston  saw, 
with  astonishment  and  horror,  the  dreaded  sect 
increase  just  in  proportion  to  the  number  and 
severity  of  the  laws  against  them.  Said  Christison 
at  his  trial,  "  There  came  five  in  place  of  the  last 
man  you  executed."  The  authorities  were  wholly 
disarmed  when  even  the  threat  of  death,  instead  of 
a  weapon  to  repel,  proved  a  magnet  to  draw  them. 


46   THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

With  such  indomitable  audacity  they  had  no  power 
to  cope. 

When  the  court  assembled  on  the  2 ad  of  May, 
the  Quakers  had  assumed  the  offensive.  In  the 
diary  of  a  private  citizen,  under  this  date  may  be 
found  this  significant  entry :  "  The  Quakers  have 
given  out  such  speeches  as  gave  cause  to  think  they 
intended  mischief  unto  our  magistrates  and  minis- 
ters, and  threatened  fire  and  sword  to  be  our  speedy 
portion  !  " 

The  feeling  of  compassion  also,  which  all  along 
had  muttered  among  the  people  its  growing  dissent, 
now  rose  in  overpowering  rebukes.  These  voices 
could  not  be  longer  braved.  This  court,  therefore, 
persuaded  by  such  means,  though  itcould  not  bring 
itself  at  once  to  a  full  repeal  of  its  law  for  capital 
punishment,  enacted  an  amendment  which  it  well 
knew  would  supersede  its  execution.  "  Being  desi- 
rous to  try  all  means,  with  as  much  lenity  as  may 
consist  with  our  safety,  to  prevent  the  intrusion  of 
the  Quakers,  who,  besides  absurd  and  blasphemous 
doctrines,  like  rogues  and  vagabonds  come  among 
us  "  [thus  shifting  their  ground  of  legislation  from 
that  of  heresy  to  that  of  vagrancy],  "  the  Court  has 
ordered  that  every  such  vagabond  Quaker,"  ad- 
judged to  be  "  one  that  hath  not  any  dwelling  or 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       47 

orderly  allowance  as  an  inhabitant  of  this  jurisdic- 
tion, shall  be  stripped  naked  from  the  middle. up- 
wards, and  tied  to  a  cart's  tail,  and  whipped  through 
the  town,"  —  and  so  on  "  till  they  be  conveyed 
through  any  of  the  outmost  towns  of  our  Jurisdic- 
tion." Should  they  return  after  being  three  times 

• 

thus  dealt  with,  they  shall  be  branded  with  the  letter 
R  on  their  left  shoulder,  whipped,  and  sent  away 
again ;  "  and,"  it  is  added  in  compliment  to  their 
dishonored  past,  should  they  return  yet  again,  they 
are  to  be  made  amenable  to  "  the  law  made  anno 
1658  for  their  banishment  on  pain  of  death." 

No  hanging  or  branding  ever  took  place  in  con- 
sequence of  this  legislation. 

It  has  been  commonly  maintained  that  a  man- 
date from  Charles  II.  put  a  stop  to  the  ill  treatment 
of  Quakers  in  New  England,  and  that  his  royal  in- 
tervention alone  saved  them  from  utter  destruction. 
This  opinion  Mr.  Palfrey  confutes.  Several  months 
before  his  gracious  order  crossed  the  sea,  our 
harsher  laws  had  been  mollified,  and  the  resolution 
fully  taken  to  put  no  more  of  them  to  death.  The 
proud  magistrates,  however,  were  quite  willing  to 
have  the  king's  injunction  generally  regarded  as 
the  motive  for  the  new  indulgences  rather  than  any 
change  of  judgment  on  their  part.  They  were  more 


48       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

stiff  than  cruel ;  and  it  was  easier  to  bow  to  the  sov- 
ereignty of  Charles  than  bend  to  the  confession  of 
a  mistake.  And  in  one  view  the  royal  will  just  ac- 
corded with  their  own :  it  removed  the  very  men 
they  were  most  anxious  to  be  rid  of.  No  doubt  it 

hastened,  and  also  widened,  the  returning  tide  of 

• 

good  feeling. 

Four  months  before  it  came,  under  the  new  law 
all  the  Quakers  in  prison,  twenty-seven  in  number, 
were  released,  and  sent  out  of  the  jurisdiction  with- 
out punishment.  Many  of  these  had  come  into 
Boston  clad  in  sackcloth  and  ashes,  pronouncing 
tremendous  woes  upon  the  bloody  city. 

As  the  clemency  of  the  rulers  began  its  gentler 
sway,  for  a  time  at  least  the  vehemence  of  the  dis- 
turbers seemed  to  increase.  Their  antics  became 
even  more  grotesque  than  before.  George  Wilson, 
one  of  those  first  released,  paced  slowly  through 
the  streets  of  Boston,  crying  with  a  loud  voice, 
"  The  Lord  is  coming  forth  with  fire  and  sword  to 
plead  with  this  city."  Elizabeth  Hooton,  an  aged 
English  woman,  who  had  been  severely  whipped 
three  or  four  times,  delivered  a  similar  message  in 
the  streets  of  Cambridge. 

But  their  favorite  place  of  denouncing  was  "  the 
steeple-house ; "  and  their  favorite  victim  was 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       49 

"the  man-made  minister."  The  early  Puritans 
had  a  sacred  love  for  their  public  worship,  and  a 
peculiar  reverence  for  the  preacher  of  righteous- 
ness. Imagine  the  horror  occasioned  by  such  a 
scene  as  this.  Four  women  arrive  from  Barba- 
does  on  the  Lord's  day.  Mary  Brewster  is  their 
leader.  She  hurries  with  them  to  the  door  of  the 
South  Church.  There,  casting  off  her  shoes  and 
riding-suit,  with  hair  dishevelled  and  streaming  over 
her  shoulder,  in  a  long  robe  of  sackcloth  whose 
ragged  edge  frets  her  bare  feet,  with  her  face  be- 
grimed with  grease  and  lampblack,  she  rushes  into 
the  midst  of  the  silent  congregation,  and,  in  a  quak- 
ing voice,  announces  herself  as  "  a  Sign  of  the  Black 
Pox,"  which  was  soon  to  appear  in  judgment  upon 
them !  She  afterwards  confessed,  that,  three  years 
before,  this  service  was  laid  upon  her  of  the  Lord, 
and  that  her  husband  was  willing  for  her  to  perform 
it !  Simon  Bradstreet,  in  his  warrant,  calls  their 
offence  "  the  making  an  horrible  disturbance  on 
the  Lord's  day,  and  affrighting  the  people  of  the 
South  Church  in  Boston  in  the  time  of  the  publick 
dispensation  of  the  word."  The  constable  could 
not  identify  her  when  she  was  brought  before  the 
court ;  for  he  says,  "  She  was  then  in  the  shape  of  the 
Devil."  Owning  herself  to  be  the  culprit,  however, 


5O       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

she  was  whipped  "up  and  'down  the  town  with 
twenty  lashes." 

During  another  service,  Thomas  Newhouse 
stalked  into  the  broad  aisle  of  the  church  with  two 
great  glass  bottles  in  his  hands,  and,  gloomily  turn- 
ing about,  in  the  face  of  the  whole  congregation 
broke  them  one  against  the  other,  proclaiming  in 
a  prophetic  manner,  "  Thus  will  the  Lord  break 
you  in  pieces." 

Lydia  Wardell,  "  being  a  young  and  tender  and 
chaste  woman,"  in  obedience  to  the  inward  light,  as 
a  sign  of  the  spiritual  nakedness  of  her  neighbors, 
with  the  encouragement  of  her  husband,  "  though 
it  was  exceeding  hard  to  her  modest  and  shame- 
faced disposition,"  went  into  the  crowded  church 
without  a  shred  of  clothing  upon  her.  Deborah 
Wilson,  "  a  young  woman  of  very  modest  and  re- 
tired life,  and  of  sober  conversation,  as  were  her 
parents,"  was  constrained  "  to  go  through  the  town 
of  Salem"  in  a  similar  plight,  "  as  a  sign." 

The  Quaker  author,  Besse,  though  writing  many 
years  after  the  excitement  of  the  day,  approves 
these  displays,  and  applauds  the  poor  dupes  who 
made  them.  Is  it  strange,  however,  that  the  guar- 
dians of  public  morals  should  seek  to  repress  them, 
even  by  the  whips  of  justice  ?  It  is  related  by  Gra- 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.   51 

hame,  that  one  man,  named  Faubord,  undertaking 
to  imitate  Abraham,  was  really  about  to  offer  up 
his  son  as  a  sacrifice  ;  his  neighbors,  hearing  the 
cries  of  the  lad,  broke  into  his  house  just  in  time 
to  prevent  the  blasphemous  atrocity. 

But  in  general,  it  must  be  allowed,  the  absurdity 
of  their  behavior  was  harmless.  They  were  pure 
and  lovable  in  their  private  lives  ;  and  their  public 
pranks  even  were  free  from  guile.  There  was  an 
"  inward  light."  It  shed  its  gentle  radiance  over  acts 
that  would  be  otherwise  dark  indeed.  It  did  not 
cease  to  shine  all  through  their  lurid  Sufferings. 
George  Fox  had  converted  his  pillory  into  a  pulpit ; 
and  he  made  so  many  converts  of  the  gaping  crowd 
that  gathered  round  it,  that  they  liberated  him  "  in  a 
tumultuous  manner,"  and  set  a  clergyman,  who  had 
been  instrumental  in  his  punishment,  in  the  very 
position  he  had  occupied.  And  so  they  preached 
in  the  court  and  the  prison,  at  the  cart's  tail,  and 
even  on  the  ladder  of  death.  Day  and  night  an 
increasing  throng  gathered  about  their  places  of 
punishment.  The  Puritans  ought  to  have  learned 
before  this  that  persecution  was  one  of  the  surest 
means  to  propagate  a  religious  persuasion. 

The  number  of  sufferers  during  the  whole  period 
of  these  severities  was  comparatively  small :  it  was 


52        THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

only  about  thirty.  An  address  to  the  king,  from 
the  pen  of  a  Quaker,  before  it  was  entirely  ended, 
gave  this  summary :  "  Twenty-two  have  been 
banished  upon  pain  of  death,  three  have  been 
martyred,  three  have  had  their  right  ears  cut,  one 
hath  been  burned  in  the  hand  with  the  letter  H, 
thirty-one  persons  have  received  ^ix  hundred  and 
fifty  stripes,  .  .  .  one  thousand  and  forty-four 
pounds  worth  of  goods  have  been  taken  from  them, 
and  one  now  lieth  in  fetters,  condemned  to  die." 
Edward  Burrough,  who  probably  wrote  this  address, 
at  length  obtained  access  to  the  royal  ear.  He 
spoke  to  his  Majesty  thus  :  "There  is  a  vein  of  in- 
nocent blood  opened  in  your  dominions,  which,  if 
not  stopped,  may  overrun  all."  Whereupon  the 
king  said,  "  I  will  stop  that  vein  ;  "  "  not  liking," 
as  a  student  of  his  character  has  affirmed,  the 
"  annoyance  of  refusing  a  request." 

A  mandamus  was  at  once  prepared  'in  these 
words  :  — 

CHARLES  R. 

Trusty  and  well  beloved,  we  greet  you  well.  Having  been 
informed  that  several  of  our  subjects  amongst  you,  called 
Quakers,  have  been  and  are  imprisoned  by  you,  whereof  some 
have  been  executed,  and  others  (as  hath  been  represented 
unto  us)  are  in  danger  to  undergo  the  like  :  We  have  thought 
fit  to  signify  our  pleasure  in  that  behalf  for  the  future,  and  do 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       53 

hereby  require,  that  if  there  be  any  of  those  people  now 
amongst  you,  now  already  condemned  to  suffer  death  or 
other  corporal  punishment,  or  that  are  imprisoned,  and  ob- 
noxious to  the  like  condemnation,  you  are  to  forbear  to 
proceed  any  further  therein,  but  that  you  forthwith  send  the 
said  persons,  whether  condemned  or  imprisoned,  over  into 
this  Our  Kingdom  of  England,  together  with  the  respective 
crimes  or  offenses  laid  to  their  charge,  to  the  end  such  course 
may  be  taken  with  them  here  as  shall  be  agreeable  to  our 
laws  and  their  demerits  ;  and  for  so  doing  these  our  letters 
shall  be  your  sufficient  warrant  and  discharge. 

Given  at  Our  Court  at  Whitehall  the  ninth  day  of  Sept., 
1 66 1,  in  the  thirteenth  year  of  Our  Reign. 

To  Our  trusty  and  well-beloved  John  Endicott,  Esquire, 

&c. 

By  his  Majesty's  Command, 

WILLIAM  MORRIS. 

Samuel  Shattock,  who  had  formerly  been 
banished  from  Salem,  was  commissioned  to  convey 
this  rescript  to  the  Colony.  A  ship  was  at  once 
chartered  by  a  subscription  among  the  Friends  \ 
and  Ralph  Goldsmith,  also  a  Friend,  sailed  as  cap- 
tain. After  a  voyage  of  six  weeks,  they  arrived  in 
Boston  harbor.  It  was  Sabbath  day.  Several  citi- 
zens, seeing  the  English  colors  flying  from  the  mast, 
at  once  came  aboard,  and  inquired  if  they  had  any 
letters  from  England.  "  No,  not  to-day,"  replied 
Goldsmith,  keeping  close  about  the  errand  of  de- 


54       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

liverance  on  which  he  came.  Capt.  Oliver,  who 
had  commanded  the  city  forces  during  the  excite- 
ment of  the  executions,  was  one  of  the  visitors. 
"  Supposing,"  says  Bishope,  "  they  were  most 
Quakers,  he  came  into  Boston,  and  said,  as  is  re- 
ported, '  There  is  Shattock,  and  the  Devil  and 
all ! '  " 

The  next  morning,  Capt.  Goldsmith,  with  Samuel 
Shattock,  the  king's  deputy,  went  on  shore ;  and 
they  two  went  directly  through  the  town  to  the 
governor's  house,  on  Pemberton  Square,  whither 
he  had  removed  his  official  residence  at  the  re- 
quest of  the  court,  "out  of  respect  to  strangers." 
They  knocked  at  the  door.  He  sent  out  a  servant 
to  know  their  business.  They  replied  that  their 
message  was  from  the  king  of  England,  and  they 
would  deliver  it  to  none  but  himself.  "  Then  they 
were  admitted  to  go  in ;  and  the  governor  came  to 
them,  and  commanded  Samuel  Shattock's  hat  to  be 
taken  off.  Having  received  the  deputy  and  the 
mandamus,  he  laid  off  his  own  hat,  ordering  Shat- 
tock's hat  to  be  given  him  again.  He  then  went 
out  into  the  street,  and  bade  the  two  Friends  follow 
him."  After  finding  Deputy-Governor  Bellingham, 
and  consulting  with  him,  he  came  back,  and  uttered 
the  laconic  speech,  "  We  shall  obey  his  Majesty's 
command ! " 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       55 

This  utterance  was  decisive  ;  and  the  joyful  offi- 
cers hastened  back  to  the  vessel,  and  gave  liberty 
to  the  waiting  passengers  to  come  ashore.  "  Out 
must  the  Quakers  be  put  of  the  prisons ; "  and 
that  night  "  they  all  met  together,  and  offered  up 
praises  to  God  for  this  wonderful  deliverance." 

Thus  terminated,  on  the  25th  of  November,  1661, 
the  sufferings  of  the  Quakers  in  America.  Later 
than  this,  there  were  instances  of  extravagance  on 
the  one  hand,  and  violence  on  the  other.  The 
court,  in  a  moment  of  anger,  at  one  time  revived 
and  re-affirmed  the  statute-law  against  them ;  but 
the  penalties  were  more  lightly  inflicted,  and  soon 
altogether  ceased.  Several  of  the  odd  gambols 
described  above  happened  after  the  pressure  of 
persecution  was  removed.  Ere  long,  however, 
they  had  also  ceased.  In  a  few  years,  William 
Penn,  whose  courtly  grace  had  already  named  him 
"The  Quaker  King,"  leaving  the  gaud  and  glory 
of  a  palace  came  to  the  banks  of  the  Delaware, 
and  erected  a  sylvan  throne  in  the  groves  of  the 
West.  The  effulgence  of  his  example  threw  a 
milder  coloring  over  Quaker  customs  throughout 
the  world. 

"  It  is  a  hard  measure,"  says  a  learned  barrister, 
"  to  visit  upojn  the  colonists  of  New  England  the 


56       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

sins  of  all  Christendom."  Intolerance  was  the  mis- 
take of  the  age.  Every  nation  into  which  the 
Quaker  came  persecuted  him  with  peculiar  rigor. 
Of  all  new  sects,  the  first  appearance  of  this  one 
was  most  offensive.  Its  attitude  seemed  insolent 
and  dangerous.  The  Quaker  denounced  the  exist- 
ing worship  as  an  abomination,  and  government 
everywhere  as  treason.  Even  Roger  Williams, 
"The  Apostle  of  Liberty,"  contended  that  there 
were  bounds  of  civil  order  that  must  be  preserved, 
and  that  the  Quakers  had  certainly  transgressed 
them.  The  Governor  of  Rhode  Island,  which  was 
the  "  backe  door  "  of  their  entrance  to  Massachu- 
setts, admitted  "  that  their  doctrines  tend  to  very 
absolute  cutting  down  and  overturning  relations 
and  civil  government  among  men."  He  could  not 
fight ;  he  could  not  swear ;  he  could  not  pay  tithes. 

"  Region,  estate,  rule  civil  and  divine, 
Religion,  —  all  they  seek  to  undermine." 

This  was  the  feeling  of  affrighted  men.  Instead 
of  the  broad-brimmed  and  opulent  gentleman, 
whose  mild  deportment  calms  and  delights  us  in 
the  feverish  excitement  of  to-day,  the  vision  then 
was  a  wild  and  dreamy-eyed  fanatic,  running  up 
and  down  the  earth  propagating  fatujtous  doctrine, 


»THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.        57 

and  vilifying  the  most  respected  men.  Taken 
with  "mighty  convincements,"  they  invaded  the 
Vatican  of  the  Pope,  as  well  as  the  Kremlin  of 
the  Czar.  They  had  "  drawings  "  to  the  Moors 
and  the  Tartars,  and  even  to  the  Emperor  of  China. 
And  their  idea  of  missions  was  as  grotesque  as 
their  journeys  were  romantic.  A  mission  was  not 
the  sober  inculcation  of  truth :  it  was  a  thunder- 
clap of  execration.  They  would  "  deliver,"  and 
then  depart.  Such  performances  in  our  day  would 
have  opened  to  them  the  door  of  asylums,  rather 
than  shut  upon  them  the  door  of  jails.  "  They 
were,"  says  Mather,  "madmen,  —  a  sort  of  luna- 
ticks,  dasmoniacks,  and  enurgumens." 

Now,  the  Puritans  knew  no  better  how  to  treat 
them  than  other  men.  It  certainly  can  be  shown 
that  they  did  treat  them  no  worse. 

Besse  gives  the  names  of  more  than  ten  hundred 
Quakers  who  suffered  imprisonment,  torture,  scour- 
ging, or  transportation  in  England,  and  the  names  of 
almost  two  hundred  whose  sufferings  there  ended 
in  death.  Does  such  a  stupendous  fact  make  it 
becoming  for  the  mother  country  to  lay  upon  her 
daughter  the  charge  of  special  cruelty?  By  an 
Act  of  Parliament  as  late  as  1662,  Quakers  were 
subjected  to  a  heavy  fine  for  holding  their  meetings, 


58       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS/ 

and,  for  a  third  offence,  were  to  be  transported  to 
a  distant  colony.  In  consequence  of  this  law, 
whole  ship-loads  were  carried  into  exile.  And  the 
mob  of  England,  —  the  very  reverse  of  what  was 
true  in  America,  —  in  spite  against  the  Quakers, 
used  to  hound  on  the  magistrate,  and  redouble  the 
punishment.  In  one  case,  the  house  in  which  they 
had  met  was  torn  down  over  their  heads.  They 
gathered  upon  the  ruins  :  they  could  not  be  dis- 
persed by  armed  men.  And  there,  huddled  close 
together  on  that  woful  pile,  the  rabble  seized  shov- 
els to  throw  the  rubbish  over  them.  They  were 
almost  buried  alive  before  they  were  driven  off. 

And  shall  we  speak  approvingly,  even  in  contrast 
with  our  acknowledged  fault,  of  the  toleration  of  a 
government  that  adopted  an  Act  of  Parliament, 
July  i,  1664,  demanding  that  all  above  sixteen 
years  of  age  who  should  meet  for  purposes  of  wor- 
ship contrary  to  the  established  form  should  be 
fined  or  imprisoned,  and,  for  the  third  offence, 
should  be  banished  seven  years,  or  pay  one  hun- 
dred pounds,  and,  if  they  returned  without  leave, 
they  should  suffer  death  ?  Is  there  any  thing  darker 
than  this  upon  the  statute-books  of  Massachusetts  ? 

The  clamors  against  the  Puritans  on  the  score 
of  persecution  are  a  modern  excitement.  They 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.   59 

are  to  be  blamed  for  it;  but  why  blamed  more 
than  others  ?  Is  it  because  their  virtues  are  so 
surpassing  ?  Among  the  Chevaliers  of  Virginia, 
a  law  was  enacted  in  terms  almost  identical  with 
our  most  reprobated  statute.  Quakers  should  be 
subjected  to  close  confinement  until  they  should 
abjure  their  country  ;  and,  for  a  third  return,  they 
were  to  suffer  death. 

In  evidence  that  the  court  at  Whitehall  did  not 
at  heart  condemn  our  severities,  we  find  a  message 
from  Charles  II.  to  this  colony,  dated  nearly  a 
year  after  the  celebrated  mandamus.  It  contained 
these  words  :  "  Wee  cannot  be  understood  hereby 
to  direct  or  wish  that  any  indulgence  should  be 
granted  to  those  persons  commonly  called  Quakers, 
whose  principles  being  inconsistent  with  any  kind 
of  government ;  wee  have  found  it  necessary  to 
make  a  sharp  law  against  them,  and  are  well  con- 
tent you  shall  do  the  like  there."  These  "sharp 
laws,"  as  well  as  the  simultaneous  arrests  in  Hol- 
land, Russia,  the  islands  of  the  Mediterranean,  and 
the  coasts  of  Algeria,  all  belonged  to  one  great 
error,  that  belted  the  globe.  Which  misguided 
people  is  to  cast  stones  at  the  rest  ?  or  is  one  alone 
to  be  selected  for  the  assaults  of  all  ? 

The   peculiar   character    of    the   New-England 


60       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

Plantation,  instead  of  aggravating  their  crime,  in 
truth  is  a  real  palliation  of  it.  They  came  into  the 
wilderness  for  the  sole  purpose  of  enjoying  their 
religion  without  hurt  or  interference.  The  govern- 
ment was  constructed  with  this  object  in  view.  "  The 
Heart  of  New  England  Rent  "  refers  to  this  fact  as 
the  very  reason  for  its  rigor.  "  The  profession  of 
the  purity  of  doctrine,  worship,  and  discipline  is 
written  upon  the  forehead  of  New  England."  They 
sought  no  proselytes  ;  and  they  did  not  endeavor  to 
enforce  their  views  beyond  their  own  jurisdiction. 
"  And  now, "  says  Mather,  "  if  the  Quakers  them- 
selves had  got  into  a  corner  of  the  world,  and  with 
immense  toyl  and  charge  made  a  wjldernesse  habit- 
able on  purpose  to  be  undisturbed  in  the  exercise 
of  their  worship,  they  would  never  bear  to  have 
New  Englanders  come  among  them  and  interrupt 
their  publick  worship  and  endeavour  to  seduce  their 
children  from  it."  The  stern  dealings  of  the  State 
of  Pennsylvania  with  some  unpleasant  intruders  at 
the  period  in  which  he  wrote  seemed  to  justify  this 
assumption.  Beyond  all  question,  a  government 
has  a  right  to  thrust  out  those  who  interfere  with 
the  very  object  for  which  it  was  erected.  The 
United  States  can  suppress  the  Mormons.  It 
was  the  evil  practice  of  the  age  to  proceed  still 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       61 

further,  and  attempt  to  control   the   opinions   of 
men. 

But  religion,  their  loved  religion,  was  the  ob- 
ject of  the  first  communities  in  America.  With 
it  the  wounds  of  the  outcasts  were  healed,  and  the 
tears  of  their  exile  were  sweetened.  "  New  Eng- 
land was  the  colony  of  Conscience."  Every  thing 
was  brought  to  the  test  of  the  higher  law.  Now  here 
were  strange  men  who  renounced,  as  they  thought, 
the  authority  of  the  Bible  ;  who  denied  the  sanctity 
of  the  Sabbath  ;  who  called  their  holy  ministry  the 
"  seed  of  the  serpent,"  and  their  dignified  rulers 
"  monsters  of  iniquity ; "  who  alleged  that  an  "  in- 
ward light,"  which  seemed  from  their  conduct  to  be 
a  mere  ignis  fatuus,  was  the  supreme  guide  of 
every  soul.  It  is  difficult  to  say  what  should  be 
done  with  such  a  people.  Certainly  they  ought  not 
to  be  slain.  But  is  it  a  wonder,  that,  as  the  court 
itself  affirmed,  "  after  all  other  means  had  failed  to 
check  their  impetuous  and  desperate  turbulency, 
the  magistrates  judged  themselves  called,  for  the 
defence  of  all,  to  keep  the  passage  with  the  point  of 
the  sword  held  towards  them  "  ?  Their  wilfully  rush- 
ing upon  it  was  their  own  act. 

The  Quakers,  although  they  despised  the  sword, 
were  mighty  with  the  pen.    They  have  kept  their  suf- 


62       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

ferings  before  the  world.  An  almanac,  prepared  by 
one  of  them  for  the  year  1694,  has  this  item  of 
chronology  :  "  Since  the  English  in  New  England 
hanged  their  countrymen  for  religion,  —  years  36." 
Their  memory  was  relentless  ;  but  we  are  glad  to 
acknowledge  that  their  hearts  were  quick  to  forgive 
us.  There  is  beautiful  evidence  of  this  in  a  re- 
cent issue  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 
It  was  found  in  the  diary  of  Increase  Mather 
for  the  year  1676,  a  period  of  great  distress  to  the 
colonists,  —  this  simple  memorandum  :  "  A  vessel 
from  Ireland  arrived  here,  being  sent  by  the  Quakers 
in  Dublin,  for  those  that  were  impoverished  by  the 
war  here."  Yet  Quaker  authors  delight  to  de- 
tail the  woes  they  endured :  their  vivid  narratives 
fill  many  a  capacious  volume.  They  are  perfectly 
trustworthy  as  far  as  the  facts  they  relate  were 
understood  ;  but  they  can  hardly  be  said  to  give  us 
uncolored  pictures.  They  are,  however,  our  only 
authorities  for  many  of  the  cruelties  alleged. 
Thomas  Westgate,  writing  from  England  to  the 
colony  in  1671,  said,  "  I  dare  not  be  an  advocate 
to  plead  for  the  cursed  generation  of  Quakers ;  yet 
let  me  tell  you  New  England  suffers  much  in  this 
country  for  imprisoning  many  of  them,  —  and 
putting  others  of  them  to  death,  —  and  I  could 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       63 

heartily  wish  you  had  printed  a  narrative  of  your 
proceedure  with  them,  together  with  the  grounds 
thereof."  It  would  no  doubt  have  corrected  some 
misconceptions. 

The  sufferers  of  that  time  used  to  predict  that 
dire  calamities  would  come  upon  their  opposers ; 
and  they  were  fond  of  tracing  out  the  deaths  of 
their  principal  persecutors. 

Major  Humphrey  Atherton,  for  example,  had  re- 
viewed his  battalion  one  afternoon  on  the  Common, 
and  in  the  dusk  of  the  evening  had  started  for 
home  in  "great  pomp  and  pride."  His  horse  on  a 
sudden  stumbled,  and  threw  him  upon  the  ground 
so  violently  that  he  was  instantly  killed,  "near 
the  place,"  observes  Besse,  "  where  they  usually 
loosed  the  Quakers  from  the  cart,  after  they  had 
whipped  them."  "  Being  taken  up,  and  brought 
into  the  Court  House,  the  place  where  he  had  been 
active  in  sentencing  the  innocent  to  death,  his  blood 
ran  through  the  floor,  exhibiting  to  the  spectators 
a  shocking  instance  of  the  divine  vengeance  against 
a  daring  and  hardened  persecutor." 

Richard  Davenport,  commander  of  the  castle  be- 
fore Roger  Clap  had  been  appointed,  in  the  heat  of 
a  sultry  day,  went  into  his  room,  and  lay  down  upon 
his  bed  for  a  little  rest.  "There  he  was  struck 


64       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKEKS. 

dead  in  a  strange  manner,  by  thunder  and  light- 
ning." Instead  of  regarding  this  event  as  a  judg- 
ment of  the  Lord,  should  we  not  acknowledge  the 
special  mercy  which  spared  the  whole  company 
quartered  there,  though  only  a  thin  partition  sepa- 
rated the  room  in  which  he  was  killed  from  the 
magazine  of  the  castle  ? 

Upon  the  accession  of  Charles  II.,  John  Norton 
had  been  persuaded,  much  against  his  will,  to  sail 
with  Simon  Bradstreet  on  a  mission  from  the 
Colony  to  the  new  king.  They  were  graciously 
received  at  the  court,  although  the  fears  of  the  Col- 
ony had  once  reported  that  Norton  was  confined  in 
the  Tower — for  Charles  had  reason  to  be  offended 
with  the  men  of  Massachusetts.  But  George  Fox 
confronted  them  in  London,  as  did  also  John 
Copeland,  whose  ear  had  been  cut  off  in  Boston. 
It  was  rumored  likewise,  "  that  William  Robinson's 
father  was  coming  up  from  the  North,  to  bring 
them  to  account  for  murthering  his  son."  The 
Colonial  agents  were,  however,  not  much  troubled 
by  these  annoyances,  and  returned  safely  to  America 
after  their  business  was  done. 

Charles  spoke  honeyed  words  in  his  response. 
"  He  received  the  Colonies  into  his  gracious  pro- 
tection, and  confirmed  their  patent  and  charter." 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       65 

But  there  were  other  contents  in  his  royal  letter. 
He  decreed  that  justice  in  the  Colony  should  always 
be  administered  in  his  name,  and  that  all  persons 
of  honest  lives  should  be  admitted  to  the  Lord's 
Supper.  These  two  articles  would  abrogate  at  a 
stroke  the  independence  of  their  courts  and  the 
authority  of  their  churches.  They  gave  intense  dis- 
pleasure to  the  sensitive  Colonists.  "  There  were 
some  who  would  not  stick  to  say  that  Mr.  Norton 
had  laid  the  foundation  for  the  ruin  of  all  their 
liberties."  He  had  done  all  that  he  could ;  but 
now  he  saw  that  some  of  "  his  best  friends  began 
to  look  awry  upon  him."  He  was  not  of  a  buoyant 
constitution.  He  drooped  under  these  neglects. 
Hitherto  he  had  always  rode  upon  the  topmost 
wave  of  popular  favor.  This  change  distressed 
him  much  in  private,  but  did  not  alter  the  merit  of 
his  public  course.  He  preached  in  his  pulpit,  and 
led  the  devotions  of  his  church,  with  the  same  unpar- 
alleled eloquence  as  before.  After  returning  from 
his  accustomed  services  one  Sabbath  morning,  he 
was  suddenly  seized  with  faintness,  and  fell  to  the 
floor  entirely  dead.  The  Quaker,  with  relentless 
hand,  has  written,  "  He  was  observed  to  fetch  a 
great  groan,  and,  leaning  his  head  against  the  man- 
tle-piece, was  heard  to  say, '  The  hand  (or  judgment) 

6* 


66       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

of  the  Lord  is  upon  me  ' "  !  This  heavy  visitation 
was  also  considered  a  mark  of  divine  vengeance ; 
but  rather  let  us  say  with  Mather,  "  Sudden  death 
with  him  was  sudden  glory." 

Rugged  but  kind  old  John  Endicott  must  also 
die.  For  a  long  time  he  had  been  almost  the  only 
one  remaining,  who  could  describe,  with  the  fond 
loquacity  of  a  personal  remembrance,  what  rude  sur- 
roundings had  greeted  that  forest-birth  of  the 
infant  state.  He  was  almost  the  only  one  who  had 
seen  it  rise  from  its  narrow  cradle  to  the  wider 
sphere  of  its  vigorous  youth.  What  miraculous 
transformations  had  unfolded  before  his  eyes ! 

For  the  last  sixteen  years,  he  had  been  the  coun- 
sellor and  chief  of  the  Colony.  It  had  been  a  time 
of  storm.  But  his  fearless  and  unvarying  hand  had 
held  a  prompt  and  steady  sceptre  till  the  end.  No 
man  ever  laid  it  down  with  more  tranquillity  and 
grace.  He  did  not  fall  by  an  untimely  blow.  In 
the  beautiful  language  of  the  day,  "  old  age  and 
the  infirmities  thereof,  coming  upon  him,  he  fell 
asleep  in  the  Lord,  on  the  i5th  of  March,  1665," 
at  the  age  of  seventy-seven  ;  "  and  he  was  with 
great  honor  and  solemnity  interred  in  Boston,"  on 
the  23d  of  the  same  month.  His  frank  and  in- 
dependent spirit,  and  the  great  services  he  had 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS.       67 

rendered  the  state,  won  their  befitting  guerdon  in 
the  public  esteem.  "  He  died  poor,"  says  the  diary 
of  Capt.  John  Hull,  "  as  most  of  our  rulers  do, 
having  more  attended  the  public  than  their  own 
private  interests." 

In  the  unflinching  administration  of  what  he 
thought  to  be  justice,  some  men  had  suffered 
wrongfully ;  but,  says  Palfrey,  "  he  understood  him- 
self"to  be  severe,  only  in  the  assertion  of  an  abso- 
lute right,  and  the  needful  exercise  of  a  public  guar- 
dianship." "  For  my  country  and  my  God,"  was 

» 

the  motto  inscribed  upon  his  motives.  Unquali- 
fied devotion  to  the  one,  and  unreserved  obedience 
to  the  other,  ever  gave  to  his  career  a  peculiarly 
buoyant  and  resolute  advance.  No  faultless  cha- 
racter is  claimed  for  him.  His  steel-bound  nature 
presented  too  few  apertures  for  the  appeals  of  the 
gentler  emotions.  Yet  it  may  well  be  doubted 
whether  men  less  stern  in  their  principles  than  he 
could  have  accomplished,  amid  all  the  obstacles 
that  they  had  to  confront,  the  great  work  to  which 
Providence  had  called  them,  —  the  foundation  of  a 
republic  strong  enough,  ere  long,  to  throw  its 
radiant  and  solid  arch  across  an  entire  continent. 

"  These  transient  persecutions,"  in  the  elegant 
phrase  of  Mr.  Bancroft,  "begun  in  self-defence, 


68       THE  COMING  OF  THE  QUAKERS. 

were  yet  no  more  than  a  train  of  mists  hovering  of 
an  autumn  morning  over  the  channel  of  a  fine  river, 
that  diffused  freshness  and  fertility  wherever  it 
wound."  If  those  mists  have  not  altogether  disap- 
peared, we  can  look  beneath  them  over  wide  and 
blooming  fields  which  that  river  continues  to 
enrich. 


.  II. 

THE    WITCHCRAFT    DELUSION, 


II. 


THE   WITCHCRAFT    DELUSION. 

ALLOWS  HILL  still  haunts  the  western  bor- 
der  of  Salem,  a  grim  spectre  of  the  dreadful 
past.  Around  its  base  have  clustered  the  factories 
and  homes  of  a  thriving  population,  and  their  build- 
ings begin  to  ascend  its  rocky  sides.  But  the  bald 
and  ancient  top  continues  to  affront  the  open  sky. 
Our  eye  cannot  run  up  that  rocky  height,  without 
recalling  to  our  heart  the  most  appalling  event 
of  Colonial  history.  There,  looming  against  the 
summer  clouds  of  1692,  nineteen  innocent  persons 
were  hanged  by  the  neck  till  they  were  dead.  The 
witchraft  delusion  is  not  a  myth.  Its  solemn  wit- 
ness stands  to-day,  reciting  as  it  has  from  the  first 
the  weird  story  of  its  wild  executions. 

This  is  almost  the  only  spot  that  can  be  identi- 
fied with  the  tragedy  that  was  then  enacted.  The 
subject  was  fraught  with  horror  to  the  minds  of  the 


72         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

original  actors.  Their  faltering  lips  refused  to  re- 
peat to  their  children  the  harrowing  tale.  Hardly 
one  oral  tradition  has  come  down  from  them  to  the 
present  day.  How  deep  is  the  pathos  of  such  a 
silence  I  Those  poor  penitents  avoided  the  theme 
with  studious  dread,  and  in  their  daily  converse 
would  pass  and  repass  its  local  relics  without  a 
word. 

But  over  the  broad  earth  there  are  many  spots 
that  could  speak  to  us  in  the  language  of  Gallows 
Hill,  and  those  voiceless  fields.  Every  nation, 
every  age,  has  brought  its  hecatomb  of  victims  to 
the  altar  of  this  imaginary  crime.  It  was  the  lot 
of  our  "  City  of  Peace  "  to  render  one  of  the  last, 
though  by  no  means  the  largest,  of  these  offerings 
of  human  life. 

But  why  should  a  witch  be  hunted  with  the  rude 
vengeance  which  the  records  of  the  older  times  all 
reveal  ?  Can  she  be  worthy  of  such  severity  ?  Our 
modern  notion  of  her  is  a  very  merry  one.  A 
toothless,  nervous  old  lady  strides  a  broomstick, 
and  rides  a  wayward,  rollicking  race,  over  the  trees, 
among  black  clouds,  stirring  up  little  tempests  of 
wind,  and  landing  we  don't  know  where,  and  don't 
care  how.  That  is  the  witch  of  our  ideas :  why 
strive  to  hurt  her  ?  To  be  bewitched  now-a-days  is 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.          73 

to  be  thrilled  with  a  fascination  that  is  pleasant 
instead  of  malign.  It  is  not  the  effect  of  an  "  evil 
eye,"  but  of  glances  that  beam  with  innocent 
charms.  With  us  a  magical  touch  is  a  touch  of 
delight ;  enchantment  bears  the  sense  of  Elysium. 
Perhaps  we  should  not  think  it  exaggeration  to  say 
that  the  Cupid  of  the  classic  story  has  surrendered 
his  office  to  the  first-class  witch  of  our  times.  She 
brews  no  noxious  poison  but  the  philters  of  harm- 
less love.  She  howls  no  horrid  curses  ;  but  she 
sings  in  siren  tones.  She  has  no  "  black  art "  to 
ply,  aided  by  diabolic  powers.  With  coy  and  un- 
vexed  management,  she  brings  about  her  gladsome 
ends.  How  comes  it  to  pass  that  such  a  dear, 
handy  creature  should  have  been  condemned  to  die 
by  the  codes  of  every  civilized  country  in  the 
world? 

Our  reply  to  such  a  question  must  be  briefly  this. 
The  meaning  of  the  title  was  altegether  different 
in  former  times  from  what  it  is  now.  It  had  ghostly 
terrors,  of  which  the  dawn  of  modern  light  has 
robbed  it.  We  search  for  its  definition.  We  are 
amazed  to  find  that  it  embodies  the  most  lurid 
notions  that  the  mind  has  ever  conceived.  Dr. 
Ogilvie,  in  his  learned  revision  of  Webster  to  make 
the  "  Imperial  Dictionary  "  of  Great  Britain,  gives  a 


74         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

lustrous  description  of  its  evil  import  in  the  sev- 
enteenth century.  "  Witchcraft  is  the  practice  of 
witches,  sorcery,  enchantment,  intercourse  with  the 
Devil,  a  supernatural  power  which  persons  were 
formerly  supposed  to  obtain  possession  of  by  enter- 
ing into  compact  with  the  Devil.  Indeed,  it  was 
fully  believed  that  they  gave  themselves  up  to  him, 
body  and  soul,  while  he  engaged  that  they  should 
want  for  nothing,  and  should  be  able  to  assume 
whatever  shape  they  pleased,  to  visit  and  torment 
their  enemies,  and  accomplish  their  infernal  pur- 
poses. As  soon  as  the  bargain  was  concluded,  the 
Devil  was  said  to  deliver  to  the  witch  an  imp,  or 
familiar  spirit,  to  be  ready  at  call,  and  to  do  what- 
ever it  was  directed.  By  the  aid  of  this  imp  and 
the  Devil  together,  the  witch,  who  was  almost  al- 
ways an  old  woman,  was  enabled  to  transport  her- 
self through  the  air  on  a  broomstick  or  a  spit,  and 
to  transform  herself  into  various  shapes,  particu- 
larly those  of  cats  and  hares,  to  inflict  diseases  on 
whomsoever  she  pleased,  and  to  punish  her  enemies 
in  a  variety  of  ways.  The  belief  of  witchcraft  is 
very  ancient.  It  was  universally  believed  in 
Europe  till  the  sixteenth  century,  and  even  main- 
tained its  ground  with  tolerable  firmness  till  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Vast  numbers 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.         75 

of  reputed  witches  were  condemned  to  be  burned 
every  year ;  so  that  in  England  alone  it  is  computed 
that  no  fewer  than  thirty  thousand  of  them  suffered 
at  the  stake  !  "  This  great  definition,  pointed  out 
to  us  by  Mr.  S.  G.  Drake,  in  his  valuable  introduc- 
tion to  a  fine  edition  of  Mather  and  Calef,  is  so 
clear  and  precise  that  we  understand  at  once  why 
that  witchcraft  was  a  capital  offence.  It  was  the 
very  sin  of  sins.  It  was  the  most  accursed  iniquity, 
—  nothing  less  than  a  personal  league  with  the  Evil 
One.  It  was  not  merely  necromancy  or  magic,  sim- 
ply a  wonder-working  art.  It  was  not  the  vague  use 
of  amulets  and  charms  for  the  purpose  of  obtain- 
ing material  good.  It  was  not  divination  alone, 
which  reads  the  thoughts  of  alien  spirits,  and  turns 
the  horoscope  of  coming  events.  It  was  not  corre- 
spondence, by  these  means,  with  the  unseen  world, 
without  regard  to  the  character  of  the  correspond- 
ent. This  might  be  innocent.  It  might  invite 
the  intervention  even  of  the  pure  angelic  spirits. 
It  might  involve  no  great  treason  against  God. 
But  witchcraft  was  actual  alliance  with  the  prince 
of  the  power  of  the  air.  All  nations  then  believed 
that  mortal  men,  while  still  upon  the  earth,  could 
become  his  pledged  and  formal  confederates,  and 
could  join  forces  with  him,  and  wicked  spirits 


76         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

beneath  him,  for  the  purpose  of  warring  against 
the  gospel,  and  defying  the  King  of  heaven.  Is  it 
strange  that  this  was  regarded  as  the  most  flagrant 
of  crimes  ?  In  acknowledgment  of  such  a  con- 
tract, Satan,  on  his  part,  agreed  to  exercise  his  own 
supernatural  powers  in  their  behalf,  and  also  to  give 
to  them  the  same  powers,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent, 
as  they  proved  to  be  -  his  worthy  supporters. 
Besides,  this  "  covenant  with  hell  "  was  thought  to 
convey  great  advantage  to  the  Prince  of  hell  him- 
self as  well  as  to  his  human  accomplice.  He  could 
not  work  with  his  best  success  in  the  sphere  of  this 
world,  without  the  voluntary  co-operation  of  some 
of  its  intelligent  inhabitants.  A  bad  man  or  a  bad 
woman,  who  consented  to  be  an  instrument  for  his 
hand,  was  the  mightiest  weapon  he  could  hurl 
against  the  ranks  of  the  good.  To  such  a  federa- 
tion was  ascribed  almost  unlimited  power.  "  Thou 
shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live."  If  the  seventeenth- 
century  notion  is  indeed  the  one  the  Scriptures 
lodged  in  this  word,  no  wonder  the  divine  denuncia- 
tion was  proclaimed  against  it. 

In  the  elaborate  work  of  Mr.  C.  W.  Upham  upon 
this  subject,  published  by  Wiggin  &  Lunt,  the  power 
of  a  witch  to  afflict  whomsoever  she  will  is  thus  de- 
scribed :  "  She  could  throw  them  into  convulsions, 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.         77 

cause  them  to  pine  away,  choke,  bruise,  pierce,  and 
craze  them,  and  even  subject  them  to  death  itself." 
She  had  the  faculty  of  "  second  sight,"  and  was 
able  to  communicate  information  from  the  spirit- 
world,  like  "  mediums  "  of  the  present  day.  She 
could  read  inmost  thoughts,  press  temptations 
upon  those  near  or  far  away,  bring  up  the  shades 
of  the  departed,  and  ply  the  living  with  infernal 
arts  of  every  kind.  And,  worst  of  all,  she  could 
come  in  her  "shape,"  or  apparition,  to  any  persons, 
however  distant  from  her  "  bodily  presence,"  and 
operate  upon  them  as  though  she  were  really  there ! 
It  was  this  imagined  fact  which  admitted  the  possi- 
bility of  "  spectral  evidence,"  as  it  was  termed,  — 
evidence  which  proved  to  be  the  most  disastrous 
element  in  the  Salem  trials.  Those  persons  who 
were  exercised  by  these  malignant  energies  were 
said  to  be  "  bewitched." 

Now,  had  such  a  terrific  system  of  beliefs  a 
groundwork  in  actual  facts  ?  No  :  we  say  boldly, 
no.  There  is  not  one  accredited  instance  of  the 
crime,  as  then  understood,  in  all  history,  whether 
sacred  or  profane.  "  The  Witch  of  Endor  "  was 
not  a  witch  in  their  phraseology,  but  a  conjurer 
only,  whom  God  assisted  once  by  a  miracle,  to  her 
own  great  dismay.  The  Chaldeans  and  Magi  had 


78         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

no  kin  to  this  tremendous  being.  The  Roman 
augur  and  the  Grecian  pythia  were  ignorant  as 
infants  compared  with  such  a  seer.  The  fortune- 
teller was  common-place,  and  the  exorcist  was  con- 
fined to  a  narrow  field  of  operations,  when  put 
beside  our  ancestral  wizard.  In  such  a  presence, 

their  power  was  weakness,  and  their  guilt  was  piety 

• 

itself.  This  crime  was  essential  diabolism.  Assur- 
edly, it  was  never  practised. 

But,  for  two  centuries,  the  whole  Christian  world 
believed  that  it  was  practised.  This  belief  was  a 
fountain  of  unutterable  woe.  We  are  driven  to  ask 
the  question,  How  it  was  possible  for  those  who 
bore  the  form  of  humanity  to  acquire  such  a  fiend- 
like  repute.  How  came  they  to  be  even  charged 
with  such  iniquities  ? 

Reginald  Scot,  an  author  who  wrote  so  long  ago 
as  1584,  attempted  to  answer  this  inquiry  in  a  rare 
and  ingenious  book,  entitled  "  The  Discoverie  of 
Witchcraft."  It  was  written,  as  the  humane  man 
observed,  "  in  behalfe  of  the  Poore,  the  Aged,  and 
the  Simple."  Its  kind  and  reasonable  suggestions 
ought  to  have  put  the  world'  on  guard  against  the 
errors  into  which  it  afterwards  rushed.  In  a  quaint 
and  racy  style,  he  describes  the  natural  devel- 
opment of  a  hideous  witch  from  misfortunes  that 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.         79 

originally  were  not  faults.  "  The  sort  of  such  as 
are  said  to  be  Witches  are  Women,  which  be  com- 
monly old,  lame,  bleare-eied,  pale,  fowle,  and  full 
of  Wrinkels,  poore,  sullen,  superstitious,  and  Pa- 
pists, or  such  as  know  no  Religion  ;  in  whose 
drousie  minds,  the  Divell  hath  gotte  a  fine  Seat. 
They  are  leane  and  deformed,  shewing  Melancho- 
lie  in  their  faces,  to  the  Horror  of  all  that  see  them. 
They  are  doting  Scolds,  mad,  devilish,  and  not 
much  differing  from  them  that  are  thought  to 
be  possessed  with  Spirits."  Their  mode  of  sup- 
port is  precarious,  he  implies  :  "  These  miserable 
Wretches  are  so  odious  unto  all  their  Neighbors, 
and  so  feared,  as  few  dare  to  offend  them,  or  denie 
them  any  thing  they  aske.  .  .  .  They  go  from 
House  to  House,  and  from  Doore  to  Doore,  for  a 
pot  full  of  Milke,  Yest,  Drinke,  Pottage,  or  some 
such  Reelefe,  without  the  which,  they  could  hardlie 
live  ;  neither  obtaining  for  their  Service  and  Paines, 
nor  by  their  Art,  nor  yet  at  the  Divel's  Hands 
(with  whome  they  are  said  to  make  a  perfect  and 
visible  Bargaine),  either  Beautie,  Monie,  Promotion, 
Welth,  Worship,  Pleasure,  Honor,  Knowledge, 
Learning,  or  any  other  Benefit  whatsoever." 
Witchcraft  does  not  pay,  is  the  view  of  Reginald 
Scot.  But  they  become  at  length  hateful  to  their 


8o         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

entertainers.  "  In  the  Tract  of  Time,  the  Witch 
weareth  odious  and  tedious  to  her  Neighbors  ;  and 
they,  againe,  are  despised  and  despited  of  hir,  so 
as  sometimes  she  curseth  one,  and  sometimes 
another,  and  that,  from  the  Maister  of  the  House, 
his  Wife,  Children,  Cattle,  &c.,  to  the  little  Pig 
that  lieth  in  the  Stie.  Thus,  in  Processe  of  Time, 
they  have  all  displeased  hir  ;  and  she  hath  wished 
evil  Luck  unto  them  all."  Soon  after  this  is 
started  the  infernal  suspicion.  "  Some  of  her 
Neighbors  die  or  falle  sicke,  or  some  of  their  chil- 
dren are  visited  with  diseases  that  affect  them 
strangelie,  .  .  .  which,  by  ignorant  Parents,  are 
supposed  to  be  the  Vengeance  of  Witches,  .  .  . 
according  to  the  common  Saing,  "  Inscitiae  Pal- 
lium Maleficium  et  Incantatio,"  Witchcraft  and 
Inchantment  is  the  Cloke  of  Ignorance.  .  .  .  Also, 
some  of  their  Cattell  perish,  either  by  Disease  or 
Mischance.  Then  they  upon  whom  such  Adversi- 
ties fall  .  .  .  doo  not  onlie  conceive  but  are  re- 
solved that  all  their  Mishaps  are  brought  to  passe 
by  hir  onlie  Means."  Now  comes  the  trial.  "  The 
Witch  on  the  other  Side  being  called  before  a  Jus- 
tice, by  due  Examination  of  the  Circumstances,  is 
driven  to  see  hir  Imprecations  and  Desires,  and 
hir  Neighbors'  Harmes  and  Losses  to  concurre, 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.         81 

and,  as  it  were,  to  take  effect ;  and  so  confesseth 
that  she  (as  a  Goddess)  hath  brought  such  Things 
to  passe.  Wherein,  not  onlie  she,  but  the  Accuser, 
and  also  the  Justice,  are  sorelie  deceived  and 
abused  ;  ...  as  that  she  hath  doone,  or  can  doo, 
that  which  is  proper  onlie  to  God  himselfe." 

Are  not  these  admirable  touches  of  truth  ?  But 
wise  old  Mr.  Scot  remained  unheeded  by  the  peo- 
ple. For  more  than  a  hundred  years  thereafter, 
men  conducted  as  though  common  sense  upon  this 
subject  had  never  entered  a  created  brain.  Litera- 
ture upon  it  was  abundant ;  but,  with  hardly  anoth- 
er exception,  it  only  tended  to  exaggerate  the  false 
opinions  already  held.  Bright-hearted  Horace,  Mr. 
Upham  shows,  was  wise  enough  to  reject  them. 

"  These  dreams  and  terrors  magical, 

These  miracles  and  witches, 
Night -walking  sprites  or  Thessal  bugs,  — 
Esteem  them  not  two  rushes." 

But  Virgil  thus  bemoaned  his  sickly  flock,  that 
was  under  an  "  evil  hand  : "  — 

"  They  look  so  thin, 

Their  bones  are  barely  covered  with  their  skin. 
What  magic  has  bewitched  the  woolly  dams  ? 
And  what  ill-eyes  behold  the  tender  lambs  ? " 


82         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

Scot's  work  was  burned  by  order  of  King  James 
of  Scotland.  This  redoubtable  monarch  then  set 
himself  to  writing  his  own  book  upon  the  subject. 
It  would  have  been  well  had  he  committed  this 
edition  also  to  the  same  flaming  sepulchre  in  which 
he  tried  to  bury  the  wiser  words  of  his  predecessor. 
But  the  evil  work  was  printed  at  Edinburgh  in  1597. 
Its  title  was  simply  "  Dcemonologie."  Though 
weak  in  thought,  it  was  strong  in  credulity;  and 
its  royal  authorship  made  it  a  great  power  in  the 
kingdom. 

Mr.  Wright,  in  his  "Narratives"  (London,  1851), 
has  traced  the  origin  of  this  momentous  produc- 
tion to  the  troubles  that  attended  the  wedding-trip 
of  the  royal  pair  ! 

James  was  married  to  Anne  by  proxy  while  she 
was  still  in  her  Danish  home,  and  he  in  the  lonely 
palace  of  Holyrood.  As  might  be  expected,  the 
royal  spouse  awaited  the  arrival  of  the  new  queen 
with  a  good  deal  of  impatience.  The  return  voyage 
of  the  noble  earl  who  stood  as  proxy,  and  was  bear- 
ing the  youthful  bride  to  her  anxious  lord,  was 
vexatiously  delayed.  The  sea  was  tempestuous : 
the  ship  acted  as  if  she  were  "  bewitched."  They 
were  driven,  at  length,  in  great  stress,  upon  the 
bleak  coasts  of  Norway.  The  bad  weather  con- 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.         83 

tinued  :  there  was  danger  that  they  would  be 
obliged  to  stay  there  during  the  entire  winter. 
James  could  not  endure  the  thought  of  so  long  a 
solitude.  Summoning  up  more  courage  than  it 
was  his  wont  to  exhibit,  he  set  off  in  search  of  his 
wandering  wife.  He  found  her,  at  last,  in  Norway. 
They  were  again  married  in  persona,  and,  at  the 
re-appearance  of  spring,  re-embarked  for  Scotland. 
After  a  very  rough  passage,  they  landed  in  the 
dominions  of  the  king,  May  i,  1590. 

But  such  supernatural  calamities  as  they  had 
endured  involved  something  mysterious.  James 
was  convinced  that  there  was  a  conspiracy  against 
him.  Dr.  Fian,  a  renowned  magician,  "  register  to 
the  Devil,"  and  his  two  hundred  witches,  had  been 
plotting  to  drown  their  connubial  Majesties  ere  they 
reached  terra firma  !  Accordingly  they  were  brought 
to  trial. 

The  examination  of  these  sad  wretches  then  re- 
sounded through  the  kingdom.  Agnes  Sampsoun 
testified  that  she  had  acted  in  the  following  remark- 
able scene  :  Accompanied  with  a  great  many 
other  witches,  she  put  to  sea  one  evening,  each 
riding  in  "  a  riddle  or  cive,  with  flaggons  of  wine, 
making  merrie  and  drinking  by  the  way  in  the  same 
riddles  or  cives  "  until  they  reached  a  kirk  some 


84         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

distance  up  the  coast.  There  they  landed,  "  took 
hands  on  the  lande  and  daunced  this  reill  or  short 
daunce,  singing  all  with  one  voice,  — 

'  Commer  goe  ye  before,  commer  goe  ye, 
Gif  ye  wall  not  goe  before  commer  let  me.'  " 

Then  she  confessed  that  one  "  Geillis  Duncane 
did  goe  before  them  playing  this  reill  or  daunce, 
upon  a  small  trumpe  called  a  Jewes  trumpe." 
James  was  so  excited  at  this  point,  that  he  sent  for 
Duncane,  and  obliged  him  to  play  over  before  the 
royal  court  the  witches'  reel  upon  a  venerable  jews- 
harp  ! 

He  expressed  at  one  time  some  doubts  about 
the  truth  of  Agnes's  marvellous  stories.  Thereupon 
"  she  declared  unto  him  the  very  words  which  had 
passed  between  him  and  his  Queen  on  the  first 
night  of  their  marriage,  with  their  answers  each  to 
other  ;  whereat  the  King  wondered  greatly,  and 
swore  by  the  living  God,  that  he  believed  all  the 
Devils  in  Hell  could  not  have  discovered  the 
same." 

Though  we  are  told  the  King  "  took  great  de- 
light "  in  this  trial,  and  "  was  made  in  a  wonderful  ad- 
miration," the  end  of  it  was  tragical  in  the  extreme. 
Dr.  Fian  was  "  byrnt  "  at  the  stake.  Agnes  Samp- 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.          85 

soun  was  taken  to  the  castle-hill,  and  there  bound 
and  "  wirreit "  (worried)  until  she  was  dead  ;  and 
almost  every  one  of  the  two  hundred  expired  in 
fearful  tortures. 

It  was  as  a  commentary  on  this  great  event  that 
the  royal  treatise  was  composed.  Such  a  work 
could  but  have  a  wide  and  melancholy  effect.  It 
riveted  the  fetters  of  superstition  upon  the  minds 
of  the  people ;  and,  before  a  twelvemonth  had 
elapsed,  it  issued  in  the  destruction  of  no  less 
than  six  hundred  human  lives,  condemned  for  this 
offence  of  witchcraft. 

James  came  to  the  throne  of  England  in  1603  ; 
and  he  immediately  propagated  through  his  newly- 
acquired  realms  the  favorite  hobby  to  which  his 
weak  mind  was  devoted.  In  the  preface  of  a  fresh 
edition,  he  informs  us  of  "  the  fearfull  abounding  at 
this  time  in  this  country  of  these  detestible  slaves 
of  the  devil,  the  witches  or  enchanters."  In  conse- 
quence of  this  declaration,  and  of  his  unflagging 
zeal,  a  new  and  terrible  law  was  enacted,  which 
was  not  repealed  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years.  -  It 
was  the  statute  which  formed  the  legal  basis  of  the 
proceedings  at  Salem. 

Is  it  strange  that  measures  like  these,  which 
stamped  a  vulgar  superstition  with  the  authority  of 


86         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

law,  and  the  advocacy  of  a  king,  should  have  ren- 
dered the  belief  in  it  well-nigh  universal  ?  But, 
prior  to  this,  witchcraft  had  been  pronounced  a 
capital  crime  by  the  most  venerated  courts  of  the 
earth. 

In  1484,  the  papal  see  (Innocent  VIII.)  issued  a 
bull,  charging  the  Holy  Inquisition  to  pursue  with 
pitiless  vengeance  all  persons  guilty  of  this  iniquity. 
Successive  popes  re-affirmed  his  command  ;  and  the 
pages  of  history  are  covered  with  the  horrors  which 
marked  its  bloody  progress  down  the  years  for  two 
centuries  and  a  half.  During  the  short  space  of 
three  months  in  1515,  five  hundred  witches  were 
burned  at  the  stake  in  happy  Geneva.  For  one 
hundred  years,  1580  to  1680,  in  Germany  alone, 
one  thousand  persons,  on  an  average,  every  year 
were  exterminated  by  the  ravages  of  this  imagined 
iniquity.  Before  its  fatal  march  was  checked,  one 
hundred  thousand  souls  had  suffered  judicial  mur- 
der in  that  one  country  alone.  Does  this  mammoth 
fact  suffer  the  New-England  tragedy  of  1692  to 
stand  out  in  solitary  blackness  ? 

Executions  in  Germany  had  hardly  begun  to 
abate,  when  they  had  entirely  ceased  in  America. 
As  late  as  1 749,  a  poor  and  witless  nun  closed  the 
horrid  drama  there,  by  offering  up  her  harmless 
life. 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.          87 

In  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.,  witchcraft  was  de- 
clared a  felony  of  the  deepest  dye  ;  and  Elizabeth 
signed  a  bill  that  imposed  upon  it  the  penalty  of 
death.  It  was  not,  however,  until  the  accession  of 
James  that  this  monster  chimera  began  its  wild  riot 
with  thirty  thousand  victims,  not  one  of  whom  it 
released  until  it  had  crushed  him  to  death.  In  1647, 
nearly  two  hundred  were  executed  in  England  for 
the  crime  of  witchcraft.  Upon  the  testimony  of 
Mr.  Upham,  we  learn  that  several  suffered  death  in 
Great  Britain  but  a  few  years  before  the  proceed- 
ings commenced  at  Salem.  Quite  a  number 
there  were  tried  by  the  water  ordeal,  and  were 
drowned  at  the  very  time  the  executions  were  occur- 
ring here  ;  and,  some  years  after  the  New  World  had 
wholly  recovered  from  its  fatal  mistake,  a  large 
number  were  sentenced  and  put  to  death  in  various 
parts  of  Europe.  It  cannot  be  said  that  these  for- 
eign trials  were  conducted  in  any  particular  less 
perversely  than  our  own.  Cruelty  and  superstition 
joined  hand  in  hand  ;  and  together  they  were  ran- 
ging over  the  earth. 

The  frenzies  which  have  generally  laid  hold  of 
the  popular  mind  have  been  unable  to  assail  the 
best  and  loftiest  spirits  of  the  age.  Far  over  the 
surging  error  these  clear-eyed  watchers  have  sent 


88         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.. 

forth  a  voice  of  wisdom,  to  guard  men  against  the 
threatening  storm.  But,  in  our  studies  of  the  witch- 
craft delusion,  we  discover  no  such  pleasing  relief. 
Rare  spirits,  the  most  gifted  minds  of  the  age  in 
which  they  lived,  have  all  been  involved  in  this 
great  ocean  of  error,  which  at  one  time  enveloped 
the  world.  In  1665,  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  who  was 
universally  admired  for  the  purity  of  his  character, 
and  his  varied  and  ample  culture,  presided  at  a 
trial  in  Suffolk  County,  England,  which  condemned 
two  witches.  The  proceedings  at  this  court,  both  on 
the  part  of  the  judge  and  the  accusers,  seemed  to  be 
patterns  of  what  followed  at  Salem.  The  afflicted 
fell  in  fearful  convulsions  upon  the  floor.  They 
were  dumb  and  deaf  and  blind  in  turn,  or  all  at 
once.  They  clenched  their  hands  so  furiously  that 
the  strongest  men  could  not  open  them ;  but,  if  by 
chance  they  barely  touched  the  accused,  on  a  sud- 
den they  would  fly  apart,  and  the  sufferers  would 
utter  piercing  shrieks. 

In  order  to  see  that  this  was  not  a  counterfeit 
distemper  and  cure,  several  honored  gentlemen  took 
a  child,  while  she  was  in  her  fit,  to  the  farther  part 
of  the  hall,  and  then  conveyed  Amy  Duny,  one  of 
the  accused,  from  the  bar  out  towards  the  suffering 
maid.  Having  blinded  her  eyes  with  an  apron,  a 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.         89 

third  person  touched  her  hand  as  though  he  was  the 
accused.  It  produced  the  same  effect  as  the  touch 
of  the  witch  did,  before  the  court !  "  whereupon  the 
gentlemen  returned,  protesting  that  they  did  believe 
the  whole  transaction  of  this  business  was  a  mere 
imposture."  Notwithstanding  this,  the  prisoners 
were  condemned.  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  a  name  of 
unrivalled  celebrity  in  his  time,  appeared  in  the  midst 
of  this  trial,  and,  having  been  invited  to  address 
the  court,  in  an  elaborate  and  ardent  speech  threw 
the  whole  weight  of  his  powerful  influence  against 
the  accused,  and  in  favor  of  the  reality  of  witch- 
craft. There  seemed  to  be  but  one  verdict  from 
all  concerned. 

Reports  of  this  famous  trial  were  found  in  New 
England  in  1692.  There  is  no  doubt  but  that  it  was 
regarded  as  the  main  text-book  at  the  Salem  court. 

Men  eminent  in  the  church  likewise  held  to  this 
belief.  Richard  Baxter,  our  own  beloved  guide  to 
the  "  Saint's  Everlasting  Rest,"  says,  in  his  "  Dying 
Thoughts,"  "  I  have  many  convincing  proofs  of 
witches,  the  contracts  they  have  made  with  devils, 
and  the  power  they  have  received  from  them." 
Don  Villalpando,  Advocate  Royal  in  Spain,  issued 
a  work  of  four  volumes  on  "Demonology  and 
Natural  Magic."  It  was  republished  by  order  of 

8* 


9O         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

Philip  III.,  under  sanction  of  the  Holy  Inquisition. 
It  established  and  defined  the  doctrines  of  witch- 
craft held  by  all  the  Catholic  world.  There  was 
no  particular  of  the  proceedings  here  which  does 
not  find  ample  support  in  its  details. 

Towards  the  close  of  the  century,  several  saga- 
cious men  probed  deep  the  prevalent  error,  and,  by 
their  publications  upon  the  subject,  endeavored  to 
drive  it  from  the  popular  belief.  But  their  argu- 
ments were  not  regarded  until  after  the  catastrophe 
was  passed.  Every  man  of  this  class  was  called 
"  a  witch  advocate,"  or  "  a  gallant  of  the  old 
hags."  Such  reformers  were,  therefore,  few  and 
cautious.  Witchcraft  had  the  credence  of  Sir 
Edward  Coke.  It  was  countenanced  by  Lord 
Bacon  himself.  It  was  maintained  in  an  imposing 
convocation  of  bishops.  It  was  preached  by  the 
clergy  everywhere.  More,  Calamy,  Glanvil,  and 
Perkins,  honored  ministers,  wrote  in  support  of  its 
reality.  The  educated  classes  of  America  were  no 
exceptions  to  this  army  of  errorists.  Nurtured  in 
European  institutions,  of  course  they  entertained 
European  views.  Jurists,  physicians,  magistrates, 
and  clergymen,  and  the  populace  almost  without 
dissent,  believed  in  the  theory  and  the  practice  of 
witchcraft,  through  and  through.  What  was  to 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.         91 

protect  a  devoted  village,  when  all  the  fury  of  this 
heaven-wide  cloud  should  burst  upon  it  ? 

Salem  Village  was  the  fair  country  seat  of  Salem 
Town.  It  was  five  miles  distant,  on  the  fruitful 
plains  now  occupied  by  Danvers  Centre.  It  af- 
forded rich  farm-lands  to  the  wealthier  settlers,  such 
as  Governor  Bellingham  and  Townsend  Bishop. 
They  still  retained  each  his  "  house  in  town."  But 
as  the  forests  were  cleared  away,  and  the  engross- 
ments of  agriculture  increased,  a  neighborhood  of 
yeomen  was  formed  there  which  gradually  became 
a  permanent  and  independent  community.  In 
1671,  about  forty  years  after  the  first  grants  of  land 
were  made,  they  organized  a  new  church,  separating 
from  the  First  Church.  Its  ancient  records,  still 
preserved,  are  the  chief  source  of  the  information 
we  have  concerning  the  witchcraft  proceedings. 

Among  these  sturdy  freeholders,  pending  the  set- 
tlement of  boundary  lines,  many  contests  had 
arisen.  Such  had  been  the  limitless  expanse  at  the 
disposal  of  the  court,  that  these  lines  in  the  original 
grants  had  been  carelessly  defined.  But,  with 
British  vigor,  each  pioneer  soon  began  to  insist  upon 
his  personal  rights.  In  some  cases,  trees  were 
felled  in  the  day-time  by  one  claimant,  which  would 


92         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

be  dragged  off  and  stored  for  fuel  in  the  night-time 
by  his  rival !  Real  violence  occasionally  ensued, 
as  well  as  costly  suits,  which,  of  course,  they  could 
ill  afford  to  meet.  "  The  farmers  "  and  the  "  Tops- 
field  men"  became  at  length  embroiled  in  bitter 
feuds.  These  tended  to  sour  their  spirits,  and  were 
the  seeds,  it  is  thought,  of  the  wild  animosities  of 
the  witchcraft  delusion.  Parish  troubles  had  also 
distracted  the  new  society.  The  first  minister, 
Rev.  J.  Bayley,  through  the  eight  years  of  his  labor, 
encountered  determined  opposition.  The  second 
minister,  Rev.  George  Burroughs,  was  opposed  by 
the  friends  of  the  first  (antiquus  mos  /),  and,  after  a 
three  years'  struggle,  had  fled  to  a  mission-field  on 
the  shores  of  Casco  Bay.  He  was  a  modest, 
pure-hearted  man,  small  of  stature,  but  of  amazing 
physical  strength.  Certain  prodigious  feats  which 
he  performed  were  afterwards  the  occasion  of  his 
doom.  They  were  regarded  as  proof  that  he  had 
a  diabolical  confederate.  He  was  summoned  back 
from  Maine  to  be  put  to  death,  on  the  charge  of 
witchcraft.  Deodat  Lawson  was  his  successor. 
His  pastorate  was  brief;  but  afterwards,  at  the  very 
crisis  of  the  spreading  frenzy,  he  returned,  and 
preached  to  his  former  people  a  sermon  full  of  lurid 
picturings  of  the  power  of  Satan,  and  stern  denun- 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.         93 

ciations  of  those  in  league  with  him.  The  whole 
populace  rushed  from  the  church  "  exceedingly  mad 
against "  the  accused. 

In  1688  Rev.  Samuel  Parris  became  the  pastor. 
1  This  is  a  name  more  loaded  with  odium  than  any 
other  of  the  age.  He  was  the  pontifex  maximus 
of  the  witchcraft  disasters.  It  is  not  for  us,  how- 
ever, to  judge  his  heart.  By  no  means  does  it  ap- 
pear that  Mr.  Upham  is  right  in  referring  his  ac- 
tivity, through  all  this  terrific  drama,  to  avaricious 
cunning,  and  a  reckless  determination  to  carry  his 
point  in  transactions  with  the  parish.  Many  things 
look  suspicious,  it  is  true  ;  but  there  is  not  one  that 
is  absolutely  decisive.  He  was  a  designing  and 
crafty  man,  no  doubt ;  a  great  manager,  ambitious 
for  power,  and  vain  of  his  parts.  He  was,  besides, 
very  credulous  and  fanatical.  He  was  a  victim  of 
superstition.  But  so  was  also  the  age  in  which  he 
lived.  Have  we  not  seen  that  the  whole  world  was 
tinctured  with  the  very  infatuation  which  swept  this 
people  on  to  utmost  ruin  ?  Our  main  position  is, 
that,  in  similar  circumstances,  arrest,  conviction,  and 
death  would  have  followed  the  charge  of  witchcraft 
as  swiftly  and  certainly  in  any  other  village  of 
Christendom  as  in  Salem.  The  reasoning  would 
have  been  the  same  everywhere.  It  would  have 


94         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

been  this  :  "  Witchcraft,  according  to  divine  and 
human  law,  is  a  capital  offence  :  the  accused  are 
guilty  of  it ;  therefore  let  them  be  executed." 

Prior  to  1692,  there  had  been  executions  for 
witchcraft  in  America.  Margaret  Jones  was  sen- 
tenced by  the  saintly  John  Winthrop,  and  hung  in 
Boston  in  1648.  Ann  Hibbins  was  sentenced  by 
the  revered  John  Endicott,  and  hung  in  1655.  The 
gentle  William  Penn  presided  at  a  trial  in  Phila- 
delphia which  convicted  two  Swedish  women  of  the 
same  offence.  They  escaped  death  by  a  loose  phrase 
in  their  indictment,  and  not  by  any  special  favor  on 
the  part  of  their  judge.  Two  residents  of  Spring- 
field were  condemned  in  1652.  They  likewise 
evaded  the  penalty.  Elizabeth  Morse  of  Rowley 
would  have  been  executed  in  1680  but  for  the  re- 
prieve of  the  governor. 

A  case,  however,  occurred  in  Boston  in  1688, 
which  is  supposed  to  have  had  direct  bearing  upon 
the  Salem  trials. 

A  fierce  old  woman,  named  Glover,  in  round 
language  had  cursed  a  little  girl  in  Mr.  Goodwin's 
family  for  accusing  her  daughter,  who  was  a  laun- 
dress, of  stealing  some  linen.  "  She  was  one  of 
the  wild  Irish,"  and  no  doubt,  in  her  maternal  exas- 
peration, spoke  with  great  vehemence.  Soon  after, 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.         95 

the  child  fell  into  fits,  which  seemed  "  to  have 
something  diabolical  in  them."  One  of  the  sisters 
and  two  brothers  followed  her  example,  and,  though 
apart  from  each  other,  would  suffer  in  just  the  same 
place  at  the  same  time.  "  Their  jaws,  necks, 
shoulders,  elbows,  and  all  their  joints,"  says  Hutch- 
inson,  "  would  appear  to  be  dislocated ;  and  they 
would  make  piteous  outcries  of  burnings,  cuts,  and 
blows,"  the  marks  of  which  were  afterwards  visi- 
ble. The  wrathful  woman  was  charged  with  "  be- 
witching "  them.  She  was  accordingly  executed. 

The  "  Goodwin  children  "  became  so  celebrated 
for  their  marvellous  antics,  that  Cotton  Mather  took 
one  of  them  into  his  own  family,  and  endeavored 
faithfully  to  exorcise  her.  She  must  have  been  a 
wonderful  adept  in  the  histrionic  art.  For  many 
days  she  played  upon  the  good  man's  credulity  with 
amusing  adroitness.  She  gayly  read  off  the  abomi- 
nable books  of  Quakers  and  Catholics,  which  the 
doctor  earnestly  hated ;  but  she  could  not  decipher  a 
syllable  of  the  "  Assembly's  Catechism."  She  was 
struck  dead  at  the  sight  of  Cotton's  "  Milk  for 
Babes,"  but  doted  on  the  "Oxford  Jests."  She 
was  much  in  love  with  the  Prayer-Book,  but  she 
shivered  with  horror  at  sight  of  the  Holy  Bible. 
She  would  whistle  and  sing  and  yell  at  family 


96         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

prayers.  She  would  riot  in  contortions  and  pains 
of  every  description,  now  choked  by  an  invisible 
noose,  now  baked  in  an  invisible  oven,  now  chilled 
in  invisible  water,  while  her  face  would  blacken  or 
her  skin  would  perspire  with  heat,  or  her  shivering 
body  would  be  covered  with  goose-flesh.  Mr. 
Mather  prepared  a  sermon  upon  the  mysterious 
developments.  It  created  a  profound  impression. 
It  was  published  in  a  pamphlet,  and  distributed. 
It  easily  filled  the  country  with  the  belief  that  this 
child  was  indeed  "  bewitched,"  —  the  victim  of  dia- 
bolical power. 

Such  accounts  were  considered  ominous.  They 
were  thought  to  be  proofs  that  Satan,  with  his  con- 
federate fiends,  was  about  to  make  an  onslaught 
upon  the  New  World.  Baffled  in  the  other  hemis- 
phere, he  would  make  his  last  stronghold  in  this. 
Here  was  to  be  fought  his  most  desperate  battle 
for  final  supremacy.  The  fearful  struggle  was  at 
hand. 

Such  was  the  state  of  feeling,  and  the  posture  of 
affairs,  when  the  outbreak  occurred  at  Salem  Vil- 
lage. Theories  of  law  and  medicine  and  theology, 
the  world  over,  recognized  the  reality  of  witchcraft. 
The  popular  belief  in  it  was  intense  enough  to  sus- 
tain almost  any  imposition  bearing  its  name.  The 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.         97 

community  likewise  had  local  traits  which  were 
peculiarly  foreboding  when  considered  in  connec- 
tion with  such  a  superstition.  They  had  the  vigor 
of  pioneers,  and  the  unfaltering  resolution  of  free- 
men. They  had  been  accustomed  to  strife.  They 
had  been  hardened  by  what  they  felt  to  be  wrongs. 
Above  all,  they  had  the  moral  force  of  the  Puritans. 
This  had  brought  them  across  the  ocean.  This 
had  armed  them  against  the  savage.  This  had 
carried  them  through  many  a  conflict.  They  be- 
lieved that  a  new  struggle  was  at  hand,  more 
momentous  than  any  in  which  they  had  engaged. 
They  believed  in  God.  He  was  the  object  of  heart- 
felt homage.  His  cause  was  theirs.  His  cause 
was  imperilled,  and  to  its  rescue  they  rallied. 

Said  an  author  of  that  day,  "  The  New  England- 
ers  are  a  people  of  God  ;  settled  in  those  which  were 
once  the  Devil's  territories,  he  has  tryed  all  sorts 
of  methods  to  overturn  this  poor  Plantation,  and  so 
much  of  the  Church  as  was  '  fled  into  this  wilder- 
ness.' But  all  those  Attempts  of  Hell  have  hitherto 
been  Abortive  : —  wherefore  the  Devil  is  now  mak- 
ing one  Attempt  more  upon  us,  an  Attempt  more 
difficult,  more  surprising,  more  snarled  with  unin- 
telligible circumstances,  than  any  that  we  have 
hitherto  encountered ;  an  Attempt  so  critical  that  if 


98         THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

we  get  well  through,  we  shall  soon  enjoy  Halcyon 
Days,  with  all  the  Vultures  of  Hell  trodden  under 
our  Feet." 

During  the  witchcraft  delusion,  they  felt  that  they 
were  confronting,  face  to  face,  the  Prince  of  the 
power  of  the  air.  With  this  one  idea,  a  stern,  self- 
sacrificing  people  threw  themselves  into  the  pitiless 
contest.  They  determined  to  do  battle  to  the  end, 
—  to  give  no  quarter  till  their  detested  foe  was 
driven  from  the  land. 

We  do  well,  as  students  of  history,  to  pause  for 
a  moment,  and  admire  the  uncompromising  consis- 
tency of  those  brave  men.  We  have  charges  of 
cruelty  and  fanaticism  to  bring  against  them.  But 
there  was  heroism,  yes,  devotion,  in  the  stand  they 
took.  We  see  them  grievously  deceived  ;  but  we 
need  not  be  blind  to  the  virtues  they  still  possessed. 
The  distressing  details  cause  us  to  exclaim  against 
strange  excesses,  and  condemn  what  seemed  to  be 
obstinate  blindness.  We  must  not  apologize  for 
their  wanton  disregard  of  counter  evidence,  and  the 
dictates  of  common  humanity.  We  cannot  dis- 
abuse our  minds  of  the  belief  that  some  of  the 
wily  actors  wilfully  plotted  to  keep  up  the  excite- 
ment, and  took  advantage  of  this  fatal  frenzy  for 
objects  of  personal  spite ;  but,  with  no  desire  to 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.         99 

extenuate  the  follies  or  deny»the  sins  of  our  fore- 
fathers, in  reference  to  the  mass  of  those  who  were 
implicated  in  it  we  must  still  give  it  the  name  of 
"  the  witchcraft  delusion." 

An  orator  before  the  Historical  Society  finely 
said,  "  The  witchcraft  madness  was  no  doubt  a 
dreadful  passage  in  a  majestic  movement  of  events. 
Even  here,  however,  the  great  difference  between 
the  people  of  Massachusetts,  and  of  other  communi- 
ties whose  history  bears  no  such  stain,  is,  that  what 
both  alike  professed  to  believe,  the  former  more 
consistently  and  honestly  acted  out.  Deplore  as  we 
may  the  grievous  infatuation,  still,  more  even  than 
we  lament  and  condemn  that,  may  we  not  find 
cause  to  applaud  the  brave  and  constant  spirit 
that  never  would  quail  before  the  awful  delusion 
that  possessed  it  ?  Set  upon  by  invisible  and  super- 
natural foes,  they  thought  of  nothing  but  prompt 
defiance  and  inflexible  resistance,  and  the  victory 
which  God  would  give  his  people." 

Mr.  Parris  had  in  his  household  at  Salem  Vil- 
lage several  slaves.  Two  of  them  were  "John 
Indian"  and  his  wife  Tituba.  These  two  were 
natives  of  South  America.  They  were  saturated 
with  the  wild  superstitions  of  the  race  from  which 
they  sprang.  They  infused  pagan  elements  into 


ioo       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

the  existing  fanaticism,  even  if  they  did  not  origi- 
nate the  entire  convulsion.  But  a  circle  of  young 
girls,  with  whom  these  swarthy  creatures  had  mys- 
terious interviews,  formed  the  habit  of  coming  regu- 
larly to  the  parsonage  during  the  winter  of  1691— 
92.  This  circle  used  to  meet  for  the  purpose  of 
practising  the  arts  of  palmistry  and  magic.  They 
resembled  as  nearly  as  possible  "  the  circle  "  of  the 
modern  Spiritualists.  They  were,  however,  chil- 
dren ;  and  wise  warning  or  sound  correction  would 
have  broken  up  their  illicit  proceedings.  Cotton 
Mather  advised,  at  the  beginning,  that  they  be  sep- 
arated "  far  asunder,  and  he  would  singly  provide 
for  six  of  them."  Had  this  advice  been  followed,  it 
would  have  averted  all  the  horrors  of  the  Salem 
Witchcraft.  In  addition  to  the  Indian  slaves,  the 
names  of  eleven  girls  are  given  who  were  members 
of  the  circle.  They  are  referred  to  continually,  dur- 
ing the  prosecutions,  as  the  "afflicted  children." 
Elizabeth  Parris  was  the  daughter  of  the  minister. 
Although  only  nine  years  of  age,  she  conducted  a 
leading  part  in  the  early  stages  of  the  affair.  Before 
it  had  progressed  very  far,  however,  she  was  judi- 
ciously sent  away  from  home.  Abigail  Williams,  her 
cousin,  eleven  years  of  age,  lived  in  Mr.  Parris's 
family,  and,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  was  one 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        101 

of  the  most  audacious  accusers.  Ann  Putnam, 
twelve  years  of  age,  the  daughter  of  the  parish- 
clerk,  must  have  been  a  child  of  astonishing  pre- 
cocity. Her  prominence  was  so  odious  throughout, 
that  the  tomb  in  which  she  was  laid,  at  an  early 
death,  has  been  religiously  shunned  ever  since.  The 
dying  have  often  requested  not  to  be  laid  by  her 
side.  Mary  Wolcott  was  the  daughter  of  the 
nearest  neighbor,  and  the  "  way  through  "  from  her 
father's  house  to  the  parsonage  plat  can  still  be 
detected.  She  does  not  appear  to  have  been  the 
worst  of  the  miscreant  set,  although  her  activity 
was  noted  and  disastrous.  Mercy  Lewis,  seventeen 
years  of  age,  was  a  servant-girl.  Her  unfaltering 
purpose  and  skilful  management  throughout  made 
her  responsible  for  much  of  the  distress  which  came 
upon  the  whole  community.  Others  are  less  con- 
spicuous than  these  ;  but  the  whole  circle  seemed  to 
move  with  entire  unanimity  in  acts  of  reckless  pre- 
sumption and  appalling  malignity.  "  For  myself," 
says  Mr.  Upham,  "  I  am  unable  to  determine  how 
much  in  their  conduct  may  be  attributed  to  credu- 
lity, hallucination,  and  the  delirium  of  excitement, 
or  to  deliberate  malice  and  falsehood." 

A  few  females,  more  elderly  than  these,  occasion- 
ally attended  the  mischievous  meetings,  and  finally 


iO2       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

became  active  in  the  accusations.  Before  the  winter 
had  passed,  the  circle  had  grown  to  be  experts  in 
the  illicit  arts  they  practised  ;  and  at  times  they 
would  display  their  attainments,  to  the  great  amaze- 
ment of  spectators.  They  crept  slyly  into  holes, 
dropped  unconscious  upon  the  floor,  made  antic  and 
unnatural  gestures,  and  could  writhe  in  dreadful 
contortions,  and  utter  piercing  outcries.  At  first  no 
mention  was  made  of  their  tormentors.  Gradually, 
however,  the  attention  of  the  families  with  which 
they  met  was  fully  awakened ;  and  ere  long  the  whole 
neighborhood  was  filled  with  the  story  of  their  un- 
accountable behavior.  Their  condition  became 
worse  and  worse.  They  excited  the  deepest  sym- 
pathy. Dr.  Gregg,  the  village  physician,  was  called. 
Baffled  by  the  unknown  symptoms,  he  gave  it  as 
his  grave  opinion  that  they  were  "  under  an  evil 
hand;"  that  is,  that  they  were  "bewitched."  This 
professional  decision  spread  like  wildfire.  The 
whole  country  around  became  alarmed.  Witch- 
craft was  the  all-engrossing  tropic.  Multitudes 
thronged  in  to  witness  the  tremendous  convulsions 
of  the  "  afflicted  children."  A  love  of  notoriety 
seemed  suddenly  to  awake  within  them.  From 
that  time,  perhaps  it  was  their  controlling  motive. 
Soon  they  extended  their  operations  to  more  public 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        103 

places.  Their  loud  outcries  and  awful  fits  dis- 
turbed prayer-meetings  and  the  services  of  the 
Sabbath. 

On  the  2oth  of  March,  Mr.  Lawson  preached  in 
his  old  pulpit.  He  has  left  a  description  of  his  ex- 
perience which  only  an  eye-witness  could  have  com- 
posed. "  There  were  sundry  of  the  afflicted  persons 
at  meeting.  They  had  several  sore  fits  in  the  time 
of  publick  worship,  which  did  something  interrupt 
me  in  my  first  prayer,  being  so  unusual.  After 
psalms  was  sung,  Abigail  Williams  said  to  me, 
'  Now  stand  up,  and  name  your  text ! '  And,  after 
it  was  read,  '  It  is  a  long  text.'  In  the  begin- 
ning of  sermon,  Mrs.  Pope,  a  woman  afflicted, 
said  to  me,  '  Now,  there  is  enough  of  that ! '  And 
in  the  afternoon,  Abigail  Williams,  upon  my  refer- 
ring to  my  doctrine,  said  to  me,  '  I  know  no  doc- 
trine you  had ;  if  you  did  name  one,  I  forgot  it.' 
In  sermon  time,  when  Goodwife  C.  [orey]  was  pres- 
ent, Abigail  Williams  called  out,  '  Look  where 
Goodwife  C.  sits  on  the  beam,  —  her  yellow  bird 
betwixt  her  fingers  ' !  Anne  Putman,  another  girl 
afflicted,  said,  '  There  was  a  yellow  bird  sat  on  my 
hat  as  it  hung  on  the  pin  in  the  pulpit !'  But  those 
that  were  by  restrained  her  from  speaking  loud 
about  it." 


IO4       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

No  wonder  such  performances  "  something  inter- 
rupted "  him,  as  they  did  all  others  in  that  sober 
Puritan  audience.  Instead  of  rebuking  the  dis- 
turbers, however,  almost  every  one  regarded  them 
with  pity  and  solemn  awe.  A  few  good  people  ven- 
tured to  express  their  disapproval  of  the  rude 
behavior.  They  would  not  go  to  church  to  listen 
to  such  outrageous  insolence. 

They  were  marked  by  the  offenders  for  subse- 
quent vengeance.  Mr.  Parris  was  greatly  troubled. 
He  summoned  the  neighboring  ministers  to  his 
own  house  ;  and  there  they  spent  a  day  in  fasting 
and  prayer,  in  view  of  these  strange  dispensations. 
The  children  performed  before  their  eyes.  The 
reverend  gentlemen  were  amazed  and  confounded. 
They  solemnly  re-affirmed  the  opinion  of  Dr.  Gregg. 
They  declared  it  to  be  their  full  belief  that  the  Evil 
One  had  confederates  in  that  community,  bewitch- 
ing these  poor  girls.  This  second  professional 
decision  banished  every  doubt.  "  Society  at  once 
was  dissolved  into  a  wild  and  excited  crowd.  Men 
and  women  left  their  fields,  their  houses,  their  em- 
ployments, to  witness  the  awful  unveiling  of  the 
demoniac  power,  and  to  behold  the  workings  of 
Satan  himself  upon  the  victims  of  his  wrath." 

Prompted  by  the  principle  that  the  Devil  could 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        105 

operate  upon  human  affairs  only  through  the  instru- 
mentality of  human  beings  in  league  with  himself, 
the  question  in  all  minds,  and  on  every  tongue,  at 
once  became,  "  Who,  who,  are  those  among  us  in 
league  with  him,  afflicting  these  girls  ? "  For  some 
time,  the  girls  held  back  their  charges.  The  excite- 
ment deepened,  and  the  importunity  increased. 
"  Who  is  it  that  bewitches  you  ? "  .was  the  demand 
now  pressing  in  from  every  side.  At  length,  timing 
the  announcement  with  exquisite  delicacy,  and  se- 
lecting the  first  victims  with  admirable  skill,  one 
after  another  cried  out,  "  Good,"  "  Osburn,"  "  Tit- 
uba."  Sarah  Good  was  a  poor,  "  bed-rid  "  beggar, 
broken  down  by  ill-fortune,  and  the  object  already  of 
many  suspicions.  Sarah  Osburn,  "  a  melancholy, 
distracted  old  woman,"  had  lost  her  good  estate  by 
an  unhappy  second  marriage.  Her  mind  was 
shattered.  For  a  long  time,  she  had  been  unable 
to  take  care  of  herself.  Gossip  about  her  was  rife 
in  the  community.  Tituba  was  the  Indian  woman 
mentioned  before. 

On  the  2 Qth  of  February,  1692,  warrants  were 
duly  issued  against  these  three  persons.  The  com- 
plainants were  four  respectable  men  in  the  village. 
It  was  no  child's  play  with  them  :  it  was  a  war  with 
the  Prince  of  hell.  When  the  examinations  came 


io.6       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

off,  a  vast  crowd  assembled  to  witness  them.  It 
was  necessary  to  adjourn  from  the  village-tavern  to 
the  meeting-house.  John  Hathorne  and  Jonathan 
Corwin,  two  of  the  most  reputable  magistrates  of 
the  Commonwealth,  conducted  the  examinations. 
With  great  gravity,  and  a  solemn  prayer,  they  en- 
tered upon  their  task.  Sarah  Good  was  first  put 
upon  the  stand.  The  examination  proceeded  in 
the  following  form.  The  prisoner  stands  on  a  plat- 
form in  front  of  the  excited  assembly.  The  af- 
flicted children  are  all  present,  and  alert.  The 
magistrate  puts  his  questions  in  this  amazing 
style,  — 

"  Sarah  Good,  what  evil  spirit  have  you  famili- 
arity with  ? " 

"  None." 

"  Have  you  made  no  contracts  with  the  Devil  ?  " 

"No." 

"  Why  do  you  hurt  these  children  ? " 

"I  do  not  hurt  them." 

At  certain  junctures,  the  girls  fall  down,  "dread- 
fully tortured  and  tormented,"  not  being  able  to 
look  at  the  accused  without  a  spasm.  If,  however, 
they  are  brought  to  her,  and  made  to  touch  her,  the 
diabolical  fluid  immediately  darts  back  into  the 
witch  ;  and  they  are  relieved  at  once.  Such  acting 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.       107 

could  but  have  an  overwhelming  effect  upon  the 
court  and  all  assembled.  The  proceedings  would 
then  go  forward  as  though  conviction  was  a  fore- 
gone conclusion,  and  the  evidence  of  the  afflicted 
children  absolute  proof. 

Tituba,  the  slave-woman,  though  denying  at  first 
the  charge  of  witchcraft,  afterwards  acknowledged 
it.  They  had  searched  her  body,  and  found  sever- 
al hard  scars.  They  were  said  to  be  made  by  the 
Devil,  but  were,  in  reality,  produced  by  the  sting  of 
the  Spaniard's  whip  in  South  America.  She  had 
obeyed,  however,  "  the  black  man  with  a  book." 
But  she  renounced  her  compact  with  him,  and  all 
its  horrible  obligations.  She  described  minutely 
her  infernal  operations  ;  and  by  her  strange  and  aw- 
ful fancies,  suggested  by  her  heathen  youth,  added 
much  to  the  terrors  of  the  occasion.  Her  behav- 
ior was  probably  a  part  of  the  plot  to  drive  on  the 
delusion.  As  soon  as  she  confessed,  the  afflicted 
children  were  calm.  These  three  were  all  commit- 
ted to  jail  for  trial. 

Among  the  evidences  of  witchcraft,  one  was  the 
"witch-mark."  The  Devil  was  supposed  to  affix 
this  to  the  bodies  of  his  confederates,  as  a  seal, 
and  afterwards  that  spot  would  become  discolored 
or  callous.  The  law  provides  that  it  shall  be 


io8       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

searched  for.  At  Salem,  a  committee  for  each 
sect  permanently  discharged  this  odious  and  cruel 
office.  They  would  test  the  supposed  teat  by 
running  a  pin  through  it.  Some  such  dead  or 
darkened  spot  could  be  found  on  almost  any 
person. 

Another  class  of  testimony  was  called  "  spectre- 
evidence."  It  was  supposed  that  the  witches  could 
go  to  those  whom  they  wished  to  afflict,  in  the  like- 
ness of  any  animal,  —  a  dog,  a  hog,  a  cat,  a  rat, 
a  toad ;  or  any  birds,  particularly  yellow-birds. 
They  could  likewise  go  in  their  own  apparition, 
however  far  away  their  actual  body  was.  This 
power  was  also  recognized  in  the  books  of  law. 
With  such  evidence  admitted,  the  defence  of  an 
alibi  was  entirely  void ;  and  no  charge  could  be 
disproved  which  the  imagination  could  invent. 

A  witch  could  also  act  upon  her  victims  at  a  dis- 
tance by  means  of  "puppets."  These  were  little 
bundles  of  cloth  in  any  form,  or  amorphous.  What- 
ever was  done  to  the  puppet  would  be  suffered  by 
the  party  bewitched ;  for  example,  a  pin  stuck  in 
it  would  pierce  the  flesh  of  the  person.  A  bottle 
of  old  rusty  pins  is  preserved  in  the  Court  House  at 
Salem,  said  to  have  been  taken  from  puppets  and 
the  bodies  of  the  afflicted  children. 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        109 

But  to  resume :  the  excitement  was  not  quelled 
by  these  commitments.  Tituba  had  mentioned 
four  others  as  engaged  with  her  in  their  Satanic 
occupations.  Two  were  already  in  chains.  Who 
were  the  other  two?  The  girls  continued  to  be 
tortured.  Ere  long,  "  they  cried  out  upon  "  another : 
this  was  Martha  Corey,  a  pious,  sweet-tempered 
lady,  wife  of  old  Giles  Corey.  Her  only  fault  was 
her  disapproval  of  the  actions  of  the  girls.  She 
also  was  committed ;  the  accusers,  at  her  examina- 
tion, executing  some  of  their  rarest  feats.  The 
success  they  achieved  in  this  case  emboldened 
them.  Their  next  victim  was  a  lady -without  a 
superior  in  social  esteem  and  religious  character, 
—  Rebecca  Nourse,  a  venerated  mother  in  Israel. 
Several  times  during  the  examination,  the  magis- 
trates seemed  about  to  give  way  to  the  moral  effect 
of  her  conscious  innocence :  it  was  only  by  the 
most  tumultuous  convulsions  that  the  accusers 
could  keep  them  firm.  She  was  at  length  com- 
mitted. 

All  caution  seemed  now  to  be  abandoned.  A 
mere  infant,  four  years  old,  was  next  imprisoned 
for  the  crime.  The  Devil  had  effected  a  lodgement 
in  Salem  Village :  this  was  the  overwhelming 
thought  in  every  mind.  At  this  juncture,  Deodat 


no       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

Lawson  arrived  in  town,  and  preached  his  ever- 
memorable  sermon. 

He  took  for  his  text  Zechariah  iii.  2.  He  pic- 
tured the  grim  warfare  of  Satan.:  he  called  upon 
God's  people  to  rally  against  him.  The  effect  of 
his  discourse  was  immense :  awe,  anger,  consterna- 
tion, and  frantic  zeal,  all  were  augmented  in  the 
hearts  of  the  hearers. 

It  was  truly  a  masterly  effort :  its  imagery  was 
sublime  and  terrific.  The  summons  to  confront 
unflinchingly  their  hellish  foe  was  in  the  highest 
style  of  impassioned  eloquence.  At  once  it  was 
printed,  and  distributed  throughout  the  land.  Mr. 
Parris  also  took  occasion  to  preach  upon  the  all- 
engrossing  theme. 

It  was  sacramental  day.  He  announced  for  his 
text  this  awful  charge,  "  Have  I  not  chosen  you 
twelve,  and  one  of  you  is  a  devil  ? "  The  sister  of 
Rebecca  Nourse  was  present,  —  a  noble-hearted 
sister,  who  could  not  endure  such  a  fling  against 
one  who  had  sat  with  her,  she  knew,  in  sincere  and 
sacred  communion  at  the  table  of  the  Lord.  She 
was  then  chained  in  a  noisome  dungeon,  awaiting 
the  horrors  of  a  frenzied  tribunal.  Sarah  Cloyse's 
heart  was  full :  she  could  not  stay  in  such  a  lying 
company.  She  rose  at  once,  and  passed  out  of 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        1 1 1 

the  meeting-house  to  her  home.  The  congregation 
were  greatly  amazed ;  but  so  runs  the  relation  of 
one  who  was  there.  "  She  was  afterwards  seen  by 
some  in  their  fits,  who  said, '  O  Goodwife  Cloyse,  I 
did  not  think  to  see  you  here ! '  And,  being  at  their 
red  bread  and  drink  [that  is,  at  a  diabolical  feast], 
said  to  her,  '  Is  this  a  time  to  receive  the  sacra- 
ment? You  ran  away  on  the  Lord's  day,  and 
scorned  to  receive  it  in  the  meeting-house ;  and  is 
this  a  time  to  receive  it  ?  I  wonder  at  you.' "  Well 
might  they  "  wonder  "  at  the  bare  idea  of  a  pure 
and  pious  lady  like  Sarah  Cloyse  mingling  in  the 
festival  of  devils  ?  Why  did  it  not  seem  so  strange 
to  her  neighbors  as  to  be  wholly  incredible  ? 

But  charges  were  renewed  against  prominent 
persons.  A  special  "  council "  came  down  from 
the  General  Court  to  examine  them.  This  was  an 
imposing  procedure.  The  council  consisted  of 
the  deputy  governor  and  five  other  magistrates. 
They  came  displaying  all  the  insignia  of  office, 
and  forms  of  State.  It  was  a  great  day  for  Salem. 
The  entire  population  were  out.  They  crowded  into 
"  the  great  and  spacious  meeting-house,"  where  the 
grand  judiciary  was  held,  instead  of  at  the  village. 
At  such  a  crisis  as  this,  nothing  could  have  been 
more  imprudent  than  such  an  extraordinary  act. 


ii2       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

It  added  fuel  to  the  flaming  excitement  of  the 
masses  who  gazed  upon  it.  For  a  preliminary  ex- 
amination, simply  with  a  view  to  commitment,  it 
was  unnecessary  and  reprehensible  in  the  highest 
degree.  Sarah  Cloyse  was  the  accused,  together 
with  Elizabeth  Proctor.  The  inquisition  of  the 
"  council "  was  teasing  and  frightful.  The  powers  of 
the  prisoners  failed.  Sarah  Cloyse  sank  down  "in 
a  dying  fainting  fit,"  and  weakly  called  for  water. 
"  Her  spirit,"  screamed  the  band  of  the  afflicted, 
"  is  gone  to  prison  to  her  sister  Nourse  "  !  Goodwife 
Proctor  was  charged  with  having  urged  one  of  the 
girls  to  sign  the  Devil's  book.  "  Dear  child  !  "  ex- 
claimed the  accused  in  her  agony,  "  it  is  not  so." 
"  There  is  another  judgment,  dear  child ! "  Then  the 
accused  turned  upon  her  husband,  and  declared  that 
he,  too,  was  a  wizard.  All  three  were  committed, 
April  2,  1692. 

The  witnesses,  in  their  evidence,  had  ascribed 
most  blasphemous  actions  to  the  prisoners.  They 
painted  the  infernal  sacrament  in  lurid  colors. 
The  Devil  was  ministrant,  these  poor  creatures 
were  deaconesses,  and  their  own  blood  was  the  wine. 
It  is  passing  strange  that  their  youthful  imagina- 
tions were  capable  of  inventing  such  awful  false- 
hoods. As  the  testimony  came  out,  all  present  were 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        113 

horrified  :  it  tended  to  deepen  their  resolve  to  pun- 
ish the  fiendish  crime.  Four  more  were  committed 
April  19.  One  of  these  four  was  old  Giles  Corey. 
This  man  had  a  peculiar  repute  in  our  gossiping 
community.  He  was  a  singular  character.  Some- 
how he  had  got  a  bad  name.  But  it  does  not  ap- 
pear that  he  deserved  it.  He  simply  dared  to  dis- 
regard the  conventional  manners  of  the  day.  He 
ventured  to  be  odd.  He  cared  not  a  whit  for  the 
small  talk  and  the  small  customs  of  those  about 
him.  Until  1659,  his  home  was  in  Salem  Town. 
For  thirty  years,  however,  he  had  been  a  farmer  of 
the  Village.  The  farm  contained  more  than  a 
hundred  acres  of  excellent  land,  and  he  owned 
meadows  also  near  Ipswich  River.  The  con- 
tract with  his  carpenter  for  building  his  house  is 
still  preserved.  It  was  to  be  "  twenty  feet  in 
length,  fifteen  in  breadth,  and  eight  feet  stud." 
Mr.  Upham,  in  his  vivid  manner,  refers  in  this  con- 
nection, to  the  general  size  of  houses  in  those  days. 
One  of  Winthrop's  letters  describes  a  tempest, 
"  than  which  I  never  observed  a  greater,"  which 
blew  off  the  roof  of  Lady  Moody's  house  and  all 
the  chimney  above  it.  So  sound  were  the  slumbers 
of  that  peaceful  time,  that  "  Ten  persons  lay  under 
it,  and  knew  not  of  it  till  they  arose  in  the  morn- 

o* 


1 14       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

ing ! "  But  the  fact  comes  out,  that  this  fine  lady's 
house  was  flat  roofed,  of  one  story,  and  nine  feet 
in  height ! 

Corey  had  had  many  a  rough  passage  in  his  life. 
He  was  a  bold  man,  of  exuberant  physical  strength. 
He  was  not  inclined  to  surrender  his  point,  even 
though  he  was  obliged  to  resort  to  violence  in 
order  to  maintain  it.  Yet  he  had  a  generous  and 
forgiving  nature.  He  was  careless  about  avoiding 
"  the  appearance  of  evil."  Going  into  town  one 
day  with  a  cart-load  of  wood,  a  neighbor  met  him, 
and  shouted  out,  "  How  now,  Giles  :  wilt  thou  never 
leave  thy  old  trade  ?  Thou  hast  got  some  of  my 
wood  here  upon  thy  cart."  Corey  answered  "  True, 
I  did  take  two  or  three  sticks,  to  lay  behind  the  cart 
to  ease  the  oxen  because  they  bore  too  hard." 
Such  peccadilloes,  repeated  frequently,  furnished 
constant  material  for  the  scandal-mongers. 

A  hired  man,  named  Goodell,  fell  sick  at  his 
house  in  the  winter  of  1676.  He  was  at  length 
carried  home  to  his  friends  by  Goodwife  Corey. 
Soon  after  he  died.  It  was  whispered  about,  that 
he  had  come  to  his  death  in  consequence  of  an 
awful  flogging,  given  him  in  a  passion  by  Corey. 
Corey  was  brought  to  trial  for  murder.  There 
was  evidence  to  show  that  the  poor  man  had 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        115 

been  beaten  in  his  own  family  after  his  return ; 
though  it  could  not  be  denied,  that,  for  a  certain 
fault,  he  had  been  severely  chastised  by  his  former 
master.  Yet  as  no  cause  for  ill-will  was  manifest, 
and  Corey's  wife  had  given  him  the  best  of  care, 
notwithstanding  the  prejudice  against  the  accused, 
he  was  finally  discharged.  This  affair  came  up 
again,  however,  in  a  far  different  court  from  that. 

John  Gloyd,  another  laborer  on  his  farm,  was 
a  man  of  sullen  and  unforgiving  temper.  They  had 
fallen  out  with  each  other  a  number  of  times ;  but,  in 
1678,  a  quarrel  between  them  about  wages  had 
grown  so  fierce  that  they  resorted  to  the  law.  The 
case  was,  however,  taken  out  of  court,  and  put  into 
the  hands  of  referees,  mutually  chosen.  It  was 
decided  against  Corey  by  the  voice  of  John  Proc- 
ter, who  was  the  friend  of  Gloyd.  The  loser 
expressed  himself  perfectly  satisfied,  and,  in  his 
elastic,  generous  way,  enjoyed  a  treat  over  the  af- 
fair with  Procter ;  "  for  they  drank  wine  together, 
and  Procter  paid  for  part,  and  Corey  for  part." 

But  a  few  days  had  passed,  when,  one  morning 
before  daylight,  Procter's  house  took  fire,  and  was 
burned  to  the  ground.  There  seemed  to  be  men 
about  the  neighborhood  always  eager  to  lay  every 
evil  thing  that  happened  to  poor  Corey's  account 


ii6       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

He  was  accused  of  being  the  incendiary,  and  was 
indicted  for  trial.  By  incontestible  evidence,  an 
alibi  was  proved,  and  Corey  was  triumphantly 
acquitted.  He  thought  however,  from  this  high- 
handed attempt  to  wrong  and  ruin  him,  and  from 
statements  at  the  trial  hinting  at  other  current 
calumnies,  that  it  was  time  for  him  to  put  a  stop  to 
the  malignant  and  mischievous  slanders  which  had 
been  flying  about  concerning  him.  He  instituted 
proceedings  against  quite  a  number  of  witnesses 
for  defamation  of  character,  and  recovered  damages 
against  them  all.  This  sharp  course,  however,  did 
not  put  his  maligners  into  permanent  good  humor. 

But,  for  fourteen  years  after  this  event,  the  hard- 
working but  healthy  old  man  lived  in  comparative 
peace.  He  was  now  an  octogenarian.  He  had 
been  married  three  times.  Four  daughters,  chil- 
dren of  his  first  wife,  were  all  the  mistresses  of 
happy  households  around  him.  His  present  wife, 
Martha,  was  a  woman  of  prayer.  Through  her 
loving  influence,  no  doubt,  the  weather-beaten, 
"  weary  "  husband  was  led  to  the  throne  of  heaven- 
ly grace.  The  consolations  of  religion  began  to 
cheer  his  long-troubled  heart.  When  the  silver  of 
more  than  eighty  years  was  mantling  his  head,  he 
advanced  to  the  altar,  and  made  a  profession  of  his 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        117 

faith  in  the  Saviour.  In  his  confession  to  the  First 
Church,  the  one  with  which  he  united,  he  spoke 
of  his  "  scandalous  life."  His  humble  words  were 
entirely  satisfactory  to  the  Christians  there,  and  he 
was  received  to  cordial  fellowship.  His  trials 
seemed  at  length  to  have  reached  a  termination. 
With  a  peaceful  hope  in  a  happy  home  he  was  pre- 
paring to  die.  But,  just  before  he  entered  the 
haven  of  eternal  repose,  a  storm,  more  lurid  with 
lightnings  and  more  furious  with  deadly  gales 
than  he  had  ever  encountered,  lashed  the  sea 
around  him,  and  drove  him  in  its  awful  rage  right 
upon  the  rocks.  He  was  wrecked  in  the  fearful 
surge. 

When  his  wife  was  first  arraigned  for  witchcraft, 
he  was  himself  a  firm  believer  in  the  prevalent  de- 
lusion. She,  however,  had  been  one  of  the  two  or 
three  persons,  in  the  entire  community  who  had  the 
sense  and  boldness  to  declare  "  that  she  did  not 
think  that  there  were  any  witches."  A  committee 
from  the  church  called  upon  her  with  suspicions 
raised  by  the  outcries  of  the  afflicted  children.  She 
received  them  in  a  smiling  manner,  and  said,  "  I 
know  what  you  are  come  for  :  you  are  come  to  talk 
with  me  about  being  a  witch ;  but  I  am  none  "  ! 
They  did  not  "  get  on  "  much  in  their  interview, 


n8       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

and  left  her  thoroughly  convinced  of  her  knowledge 
of  the  Scriptures  and  of  her  sprightly  politeness. 

But  her  "  shape  "  continued  to  torment  the  girls. 
She  was  brought  before  the  magistrates,  and,  des- 
pite all  her  virtues,  was  promptly  committed. 
While  undergoing  her  final  trial,  with  serene  and 
firm  composure,  she  re-asserted  her  disbelief  in  the 
delusion.  All  the  wiles  of  the  crafty  girls  could  not 
confound  her  ;  and  she  listened  to  her  sentence 
with  a  heart  undismayed  by  the  terrors  it  de- 
nounced. 

"Sister  Martha  Corey,"  runs  a  record  in  Mr. 
Parris's  Church  book,  after  her  condemnation,  "  was 
this  day  in  public,  by  a  general  consent,  voted  to  be 
excommunicated  out  of  the  Church."  The  pastor 
and  three  brethren  carried  the  vote  to  Salem  prison. 
"  Whereupon,  after  a  little  discourse,  and  after 
prayer,  which  she  was  -willing  to  decline,  the 
dreadful  sentence  of  excommunication  was  pro- 
nounced against  her."  At  length  she  was  carried 
to  the  scaffold.  Calef  tells  us  that  "  Martha  Corey, 
protesting  her  innocence,  concluded  her  life  with  an 
eminent  prayer  upon  the  ladder." 

We  cannot  refrain  from  inserting  here  part  of  a 
very  quaint  but  plaintive  ballad,  which  appeared 
in  a  Salem  paper  many  a  long  day  since.  How 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        119 

true  it  is  that  pleasantry  and  pathos  may  be  linked 
in  one  subtle  thought !  Irony  may  also  hide  a  keen 
point  in  the  feathery  stuff.  The  author  is  name- 
less. The  piece  has  been  rescued  from  oblivion  by 
the  vigilant  Mr.  Drake,  and  is  in  the  safe  custody 
of  his  opulent  work  on  Witchcraft.  We  have  room 
for  a  few  lines  only. 

Come  all  New  England  men, 
And  hearken  unto  me, 
And  I  will  tell  what  did  befalle 
Upon  ye  Gallows  tree. 

In  Salem  Village  was  the  place, 
As  I  did  heare  them  saye, 
And  Goodwyfe  Corey  was  her  name, 
Upon  that  paynfull  daye. 

This  Goody  Corey  was  a  witch, 
The  people  did  believe, 
Afflicting  of  the  Godly  ones, 
Did  make  them  sadlie  grieve. 

There  were  two  pyous  matron  dames, 
And  goodly  maidens  three, 
That  cryed  upon  this  heynous  witch 
As  you  shall  quicklie  see. 

And  when  before  the  magistrates 
For  tryall  she  did  stand, 


I2O       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

This  wicked  witch  did  lye  to  them 
While  holding  up  her  hand. 

"  I  pray  you  all  good  gentlemen, 
Come  listen  unto  me, 
I  never  harmed  those  two  Goodwyfep 
Nor  yet  these  Children  three. 

"  I  call  upon  my  Saviour  Lord 
(Blasphemously  she  sayed), 
As  witness  of  my  innocence, 
In  this  my  hour  of  need." 

The  Godly  ministers  were  shockt, 
This  witch  prayer  for  to  hear. 
And  some  did  see  y*>  Black  Man  there 
A  whispering  in  her  eare. 

She  rent  her  cloaths,  she  tore  her  haire, 
And  lowdly  she  did  crye, 
"  May  Christ  forgive  mine  enemies 
When  I  am  called  to  dye  !  " 

Dame  Corey  lived  but  six  days  more, 
But  six  days  more  lived  she, 
For  she  was  hung  at  Gallows  Hill 
Upon  ye  Locust  tree. 

No  doubt  the  husband  of  Martha  Corey  was  at 
first  much  shocked  at  her  repudiation  of  all  belief 
in  the  doctrine  of  witchcraft.  It  was  thought  by 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        121 

the  most  eminent  minds  that  such  unbelief  was 
little  better  than  blank  infidelity. 

A  member  of  the  Royal  Society  in  England,  but 
a  few  years  before,  had  written,  "  Atheism  is  begun 
in  Sadducism.  And  those  that  dare  not  bluntly 
say,  '  There  is  no  God,'  content  themselves,  for  a 
fair  step  and  introduction,  to  deny  there  are  spirits 
or  witches  !  "  Richard  Baxter  said,  about  the  re- 
port concerning  the  "  Goodwin  children  "  "  The 
evidence  is  so  convincing,  that  he  must  be  a  very 
obdurate  Sadducee  who  will  not  believe." 

Around  the  family  altar,  therefore,  Giles  Corey 
had  probably  spoken  sharply  to  his  wife,  and  re- 
buked her  for  this  lack  of  faith,  in  his  rough, 
impetuous  way.  Perhaps  he  had  likewise  made 
imprudent  speeches  abroad,  and,  in  his  vexation, 
had  fallen  into  his  life-long  phrases,  saying  that 
"she  acted  as  though  the  Devil  was  in  her." 

A  strange  paper  has  been  preserved,  which  was 
evidently  prepared  for  use  against  her  at  her  trial. 
It  was  abandoned,  however ;  for  although  it  shows 
that  Giles  believed  himself,  and  every  thing  about 
him,  to  be  "  bewitched,"  he  was  not  willing  to  say 
that  his  own  wife  was  the  witch.  It  runs  thus  :  — 

"  The  evidence  of  Giles  Corey  testifieth  and  saith,  that 
last  Saturday  evening,  sitting  by  the  fire,  my  wife  asked  me 


122        THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

to  go  to  bed.  I  told  her  I  would  go  to  prayer,  and  when  I 
went  to  prayer  I  could  not  utter  my  desires  with  any  sense, 
nor  open  my  mouth  to  speak.  My  wife  did  perceive  it,  and 
came  toward  me,  and  said  she  was  coming  to  me.  After 
this,  in  a  little  space,  I  did  according  to  my  measure  attend 
the  duty.  Some  time  last  week,  I  fetched  an  ox,  well,  out 
of  the  woods,  about  noon,  and  he  laying  down  in  the  yard  I 
went  to  raise  him,  to  yoke  him  ;  but  he  could  not  rise,  but 
dragged  his  hinder  parts  as  if  he  had  been  hip-shot  But 
after,  did  rise.  Another  time,  going  to  my  duties,  I  was  in- 
terrupted for  a  space,  but  afterwards  I  was  helped  according 
to  my  poor  measure.  My  wife  hath  been  wont  to  set  up 
after  I  went  to  bed  ;  and  I  have  perceived  her  to  kneel  down 
on  the  hearth,  as  if  she  was  at  prayer,  but  heard  nothing!  " 

Such  a  document  could  serve  no  purpose  at 
court ;  but  what  an  inlook  it  gives  to  the  fireside 
of  those  two  artless  old  people !  There  was  the 
calm  and  experienced  Christian  matron,  making  the 
"  hearth  "  her  closet  of  prayer,  at  an  hour  when  no 
one  would  intrude  ;  and  there  was  the  bluff,  un- 
chastened  convert,  who  had  come  late  to  a  religious 
life,  whose  mouth  had  long  been  used  to  sentiments 
not  akin  to  devotion  at  all.  No  wonder  the  poor 
old  man  was  not  an  adept  in  "  uttering  his  desires  "! 

Why  the  girls  selected  him  for  their  outcries  can- 
not be  told  ?  Perhaps,  since  his  wife's  actual  com- 
mitment, a  re-action  had  taken  place,  and  he  had 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        123 

manifested  his  abhorrence  of  their  duplicity.  Cer- 
tain it  is,  that,  if  he  felt  this  abhorrence,  he  would 
have  expressed  it  without  fear  or  favor.  His  ex- 
amination was  in  the  meeting-house  of  the  Village. 

"Giles  Corey,"  said  Hathorne,  the  magistrate, 
"  you  are  brought  before  authority  upon  high  sus- 
picion of  sundry  acts  of  witchcraft.  Now  tell  us 
the  truth  in  this  matter." 

"  I  hope  through  the  goodness  of  God  I  shall ; 
for  that  matter  I  never  had  no  hand  in,  in  my  life." 

"  Which  of  you  have  seen  this  man  hurt  you  ? " 

Four  of  the  girls  at  once  affirmed  that  he  had 
hurt  them.  And  they  proved  it  on  the  spot  by 
spasms  and  awful  convulsions. 

"  What  was  the  reason,"  said  Goodwife  Bibber, 
"  that  you  were  frightened  in  the  cow-house  ? " 
And  then  the  questionist  was  suddenly  seized  with 
a  violent  fit.  "  I  do  not  know  any  thing  that  fright- 
ened me  !  "  All  the  afflicted  were  seized,  now,  with 
fits,  and  troubled  with  pinches.  Then  the  court 
ordered  his  hands  to  be  tied.  "  What !  is  it  not 
enough  to  act  witchcraft  at  other  times,  but  must 
you  do  it  now,  in  face  of  authority  ?  " 

Overwhelmed  by  the  dread  displays  before  him, 
involving  so  much  mystery,  and  evoking  the  sympa- 
thy, even  of  his  aged  heart,  he  answers,  "  I  am  a  poor 


124       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

creature,  and  cannot  help  it."  Upon  the  motion  of 
his  head  again,  they  had  their  heads  and  necks 
affected.  Thomas  Gold  testified  that  he  heard 
him  say  that  he  knew  enough  against  his  wife  that 
would  do  her  business.  "  What  was  that  you  knew 
against  your  wife  ? "  The  holy  courage  of  his 
spirit  began  to  rise.  The  reply  befitted  the  most 
heroic  martyr  of  that  sad  time.  "  IVhy,  that  of  liv- 
ing to  God,  and  dying  to  sin  !  "  "  One  of  his  hands 
was  let  go,  and  several  were  afflicted.  He  held 
his  head  on  one  side,  and  then  the  heads  of  several 
of  the  afflicted  were  held  on  one  side.  He  drew  in 
his  cheeks,  and  the  cheeks  of  the  afflicted  were 
suckt  in." 

One  testified  something  about  "temptations  he 
had  had  to  make  way  with  himself."  This  revealed 
the  fact  that  a  dark  struggle  had  been  going  on  in 
his  mind.  Perhaps  he  was  almost  driven  to  suicide 
by  the  recollection  of  the  little  part  he  had  per- 
formed in  bringing  his  wife  into  her  awful  condition, 
and  his  greater  part  in  driving  on  the  public  frenzy. 
Little  did  he  think  then  of  that  mode  of  "  making 
way  with  himself,"  to  which  his  splendid  will  at 
length  should  rise,  and  which  was  ever  after  to  be 
lauded  in  the  annals  of  this  delusion  as  its  most 
guiltless  and  glorious  act. 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        125 

At  the  same  time  he  was  committed,  Mary  War- 
ren was  sent  to  jail.  She  had  been  one  of  the 
most  violent  accusers.  She  was  suddenly  one  of 
the  accused.  What  was  meant  by  this  new  move  ? 
She  would  be  a  spy  in  the  enemies'  camp,  to  warn 
and  aid  the  girls  from  that  point.  Her  part  was 
planned  for  her,  no  doubt,  by  the  malignant 
"  circle."  She  acted  it  out  with  deliberate  cunning 
from  the  first.  Her  apparent  defection  would  in 
clicate,  it  was  thought,  that  the  girls  were  not  acting 
in  concert.  She  suffered  herself  to  be  convicted, 
that  she  might  avert  suspicion  from  the  rest,  while 
they  continued  to  play  their  high  and  dangerous 
game.  Four  prisoners,  who  were  comrades  with  her 
during  her  confinement,  made  a  deposition  to  this 
effect :  — 

"  We  heard  Mary  Warren  several  times  say,  that  the  ma- 
gistrates might  as  well  examine  Keysar's  daughter,  that  had 
been  distracted  many  years,  and  take  notice  of  what  she 
said,  as  well  as  any  of  the  afflicted  persons." 

As  if  to  avert  suspicion  of  her  own  imposture, 
she  spoke  afterwards  of  her  distempered  head, 
which  from  time  to  time  would  be  filled  with 
shapes  that  tortured  her.  But,  when  her  public 
trial  came  on,  she  was  wholly  on  her  guard.  She 
solemnly  affirmed  that  she  had  formed  a  league 


126        THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

with  Satan.  She  had  "  signed  his  book."  At  the 
timely  moment,  however,  then  and  there,  she  re- 
nounced her  league  forevermore.  Her  confession 
was  wild  with  fragments  of  imagined  conversation 
with  the  Evil  One,  and  was  often  broken  by  fits  of 
long  duration.  Mr.  Parris,  reporter  of  the  case, 
makes  this  memorandum  :  — 

"  Note,  that  not  one  of  the  sufferers  was  afflicted  during 
her  examination,  after  once  she  begun  to  confess,  though 
they  were  tormented  before." 

Her  struggle  with  Satan  was  long  and  fearful, 
before  she  could  tear  herself  from  his  desperate 
clutches.  At  length  she  was  victorious  ;  and  then 
she  gave  such  a  circumstantial  and  horrid  expose^ 
of  the  sins  of  witchcraft,  that  it  confirmed  the  faith 
of  the  eager  listeners  in  its  reality,  and  cleared  her 
easily  of  all  its  punishments.  She  acted  her  part 
with  dexterous  address. 

In  descriptions  of  the  diabolical  sacrament,  a 
"  man  in  black  "  had  been  spoken  of.  Who  was 
this?  High  and  dreadful  disclosures  were  ex- 
pected in  the  response.  They  were  truly  at  hand, 
when  Rev.  George  Burroughs  was  declared  a  witch, 
—  this  term  being  then  applied  indiscriminately  to 
males  and  females.  He  was  laboring  in  his  hum- 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        127 

ble  field  in  Maine  ;  but  they  despatched  the  sheriff, 
arrested  him  rudely,  and  committed  him  for  trial. 
Nothing  could  have  prompted  this  selection  but 
pure  and  simple  malice.  There  was  existing,  how- 
ever, an  old  parish-grudge,  which  leagued  well  with  a 
desire  on  the  part  of  the  accusers  to  show  the 
fearful  power  they  could  wield. 

The  prisons  now  were  almost  full  of  those  who 
had  "  signed  the  book  "  of  the  Devil,  putting  them- 
selves in  solemn  federation  with  him. 

In  the  town  of  Andover,  a  good  man's  wife  fell 
sick.  He  became  convinced,  by  the  physician  at- 
tending, that  she  was  "bewitched."  He  drove 
down  to  Salem  Village  to  ascertain  from  the  "  af- 
flicted children  "  who  was  her  tormentor.  Two  of 
them  returned  with  him  to  Andover.  "  Never," 
says  Mr.  Upham,  "  did  a  place  receive  such  fatal 
visitors.  The  Grecian  horse  did  not  bring  greater 
consternation  to  Ancient  Ilium.  Immediately  after 
their  arrival,  they  succeeded  in  getting  more  than 
fifty  of  the  inhabitants  into  prison,  several  of  whom 
were  hanged  !  "  Panic  spread  everywhere.  The  idea 
prevailed,  that  the  only  way  to  prevent  an  accusa- 
tion was  to  become  an  accuser.  The  confessing 
witches  were  thus  greatly  multiplied,  and  the  power 
of  the  delusion  mightily  strengthened.  Fear  was 
on  every  face,  and  distress  in  every  heart. 


128        THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

Many  quit  the  country  altogether.  Business 
was  at  a  stand-still.  The  conviction  settled  upon 
the  people  that  an  infernal  confederacy  had  got 
foothold  in  the  land,  and  was  carrying  it  over  to 
the  power  of  the  Evil  One. 

At  this  crisis,  May  14,  1692,  Sir  William  Phips 
arrived  in  Boston  with  a  most  momentous  commis- 
sion. The  government,  under  the  old  charter,  was 
abrogated  ;  and  the  new  charter,  making  Massa- 
chusetts a  royal  province,  instead  of  an  indepen- 
dent colony,  commenced  its  unwelcome  sway. 

Rev.  Increase  Mather,  who  had  been  the  agent 
of  the  State  at  the  royal  court  for  five  years,  was 
invited  to  nominate  the  officers  of  the  incoming 
administration.  Phips  was  appointed  governor  at 
his  suggestion.  Concerning  his  character  as  a 
ruler,  Hutchinson  slyly  says,  "  His  conduct  when 
captain  of  a  ship-of-war  is  represented  as  very 
much  to  his  advantage  ;  but  further  talents  were 
necessary  for  the  good  government  of  a  province." 
Had  he  been  a  great-hearted  man,  he  might,  in 
the  exercise  of  his  newly-acquired  power,  have 
done  much  to  assuage  the  growing  frenzy.  Instead 
of  that,  he  sent  a  petty,  cruel  order  down  to  the 
jails  of  Salem,  requiring  that  those  imprisoned  for 
witchcraft  should  be  thrown  into  irons  at  once. 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        129 

A  scrap  from  the  account-book  of  John  Arnold, 
the  jailer,  has  recently  been  found.  It  has  these 
significant  items  :  "  May  23.  To  shackles  for  ten 
prisoners ; "  "  May  29.  To  one  pair  of  irons  for 
Mary  Cox  ; "  &c.  At  this  time,  the  prisons  in  all 
the  vicinity  of  Salem  were  full.  There  had  been 
no  final  trials  at  all.  Urged  by  a  sense  of  the 
emergency,  although  he  had  no  shadow  of  author- 
ity for  the  act,  the  governor  constituted  a  special 
Court  of  Oyer  and  Terminer.  It  was  made  up  of 
seven  judges,  armed  with  his  commissions.  The 
deputy -governor,  William  Stoughton,  was  chief-jus- 
tice :  most  of  its  members  were  citizens  of  Boston. 
They  were  impartial  men,  if  any  could  be  found ; 
although,  like  their  fellow-citizens,  they  were  bond- 
slaves of  the  delusion. 

The  court  was  opened  at  Salem  in  the  first  week 
of  June.  And  now  the  scenes  of  the  preliminary 
examinations  were  to  be  repeated  at  a  more  august 
tribunal.  The  character  of  the  evidence  was  the 
same  ;  and  the  futility  of  all  defence,  with  the  exist- 
ing laws,  was  quite  as  apparent. 

Bridget  Bishop  was  the  only  one  tried  at  the  first 
session.  She  was  a  weak,  irascible  woman,  although 
in  respectable  life,  —  occupying  the  very  house  in 
town  where  the  honored  author,  Mr.  Upham,  after- 


130       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

wards  resided.  She  was  convicted  by  the  fits  and 
fancies  of  the  girls  ;  and,  within  a  week,  the  dread- 
ful sentence  was  executed  on  Gallows,  or  Witch, 
Hill. 

After  this  first  brief  act  of  the  bloody  drama  on 
which  they  had  entered,  the  court  withdrew  to  take 
breath.  They  wished  to  examine  their  position. 
It  was  found  that  there  was  no  statute  in  the  Prov- 
ince in  actual  force  against  witchcraft  at  the  time 
of  the  commitments.  The  old  enactment  of  James 
the  First  was  regarded  as  sufficient  authority.  Just 
as  the  special  court  were  upon  the  point  of  adjourn- 
ing, the  General  Court  revived  the  laws  of  the  first 
charter,  dated  1641.  The  one  against  witches  was 
very  concise  :  "  If  any  man  or  woman  be  a  witch 
(that  is,  hath  or  consulteth  with  a  familiar  spirit), 
they  shall  be  put  to  death."  These  laws  were 
drawn  up  by  the  celebrated  John  Cotton.  They 
are  termed  "The  Body  of  Liberties."  In  the  mar- 
gin, against  this  paragraph,  are  the  references,  Deut. 
xiii.  6-10,  xvii.  2-6  ;  Ex.  xxii.  20.  By  this  action, 
the  Legislature  adopted  the  proceedings  a*  Salem 
as  a  Provincial  matter,  for  which  the  immediate 
locality  was  not  responsible,  but  the  country  at 
large. 

During  the  recess  of  the   court,  the  Governor 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        131 

and  Council  presented  a  request  to  the  prominent 
clergymen  of  the  metropolis  for  their  advice  in 
the  existing  state  of  things.  Mr.  Hutchinson  gives 
us  the  famous  document  entire.  It  conveys  the 
calm  opinions  of  the  cultivated  and  pious  men  of 
the  day. 

The  Return  of  several  Ministers  consulted  by  his  Excellency 
and  the  Honorable  Council  upon  the  present  Witchcraft  in 

Salem  Village. 

BOSTON,  June  15,  1692. 

I.  The  afflicted  state  of  our  poor  neighbors  that  are  now 
suffering  by  molestations  from  the  invisible  world,  we  ap- 
prehend so  deplorable,  that  we  think  their  condition  calls  for 
the  utmost  help  of  all  persons  in  their  several  capacities. 

This  justified  their  intervention. 

II.  We  cannot  but,  with  all  thankfulness,  acknowledge 
the  success  which  the  merciful  God  has  given  to  the  sedu- 
lous and  assiduous  endeavours  of  our  honorable  rulers  to 
defeat  the  abominable  witchcrafts  which  have  been  commit- 
ted in  the  country,  humbly  praying  that  the  discovery  of 
those  mysterious   and  mischievous  wickednesses    may  be 
perfected. 

This  was  a  courtly  compliment. 

III.  We  judge,  that,  in  the  prosecution  of  these  and  all 
such  witchcrafts,  there  is  need  of  a  very  critical  and  exquisite 
caution,  lest,  by  too  much  credulity  for  things  received  only 
upon  the  DeviPs  authority,  there  be  a  door  opened  for  a  long 
train  of  miserable  consequences,  and  Satan  get  an  advantage 
over  us ;  for  we  should  not  be  ignorant  of  his  devices. 


132       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

This  is  royal  advice.  Would  that  it  had  been 
followed ! 

IV.  As,  in  complaints  upon  witchcraft,  there  may  be  mat- 
ters of  inquiry  which  do  not  amount  unto  matters  of  pre- 
sumption, and  there  may  be  matters  of  presumption  which 
yet  may  not  be  matters  of  conviction,  so  it  is  necessary  that 
all  proceedings  thereabout  be  managed  with  exceeding  ten- 
derness toward  those  that  may  be  complained  of,  especially 
if  they  have  been  persons  formerly  of  an  unblemished  repu- 
tation. 

Shall  we  find  this  "  tenderness "  in  the  Salem 
court  ? 

V.  When  the  first  inquiry  is  made  into  the  circumstances 
of  such  as  may  lye  under  the  just  suspicion  of  witchcrafts, 
we  could  wish  that  there  may  be  admitted  as  little  as  possi- 
ble of  such  noise,  company,  and  openness,  as  may  too  hastily 
expose  them  that  are  examined,  and  that  there  may  be  noth- 
ing used  as  a  test  for  the  trial  of  the  suspected,  .the  lawful- 
ness whereof  may  be  doubted  by  the   people  of  God,  but 
that  the  directions  given  by  such  judicious  writers  as  Per- 
kins and  Bernard  may  be  observed. 

Perkins  gives  sixteen  rules  for  discovering 
witches  epitomized  in  "  Wonders  of  the  Invisible 
World,"  London,  1862,  p.  30.  Any  man  to-day 
would  willingly  be  tried  by  them,  if  fairly  applied. 

VI.  Presumptions,  whereupon  persons  maybe  committed, 
and  much  more   convictions,  whereupon  persons  may  be 
condemned  as  guilty  of  witchcraft,  ought  certainly  to  be 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        133 

more  considerable  than  barely  the  accused  persons  being 
represented  by  a  spectre  unto  the  afflicted  ;  inasmuch  as  it  is 
an  undoubted  and  a  notorious  thing,  that  a  daemon  may  by 
God's  permission  appear  even  to  ill  purposes  in  the  shape 
of  an  innocent,  yea,  and  a  virtuous  man.  Nor  can  we  esteem 
alterations  made  in  the  sufferers  by  a  look  or  touch  of  the 
accused  to  be  an  infallible  evidence  of  guilt,  but  frequently 
liable  to  be  abused  by  the  Devil's  legerdemain. 

The  ministers  fought  against  "spectre  evi- 
dence ; "  but  it  was  in  fact  the  only  fatal  evidence 
that  was  rendered  at  all. 

VII.  We  know  not  whether  some  remarkable  affronts  given 
the  devils,  by  our  disbelieving  those  testimonies,  whose  whole 
force  and  strength  is  from  them  alone,  may  not  put  a  period 
unto  the  progress  of  the  dreadful  calamity  begun  upon  us,  in 
the  accusation  of  so  many  persons,  whereof  some,  we  hope, 
are  yet  clear  from  the  great  transactions  laid  to  their  charge. 

"  A  period  "  would  have  been  put  to  it,  had  they 
obeyed  this  clerical  suggestion. 

VIII.  Nevertheless,  we   cannot  but  humbly  recommend 
unto  the  government  the  speedy  and  vigorous  prosecutions 
of  such  as  have  rendered  themselves  obnoxious,  according 
to  the  directions  given  in  the  laws  of  God,  and  the  wholesome 
statutes  of  the  English  nation,  for  the  detection  of  witch- 
craft. 

This  was  the  only  recommendation  obeyed  by 
the  magistrates  in  any  particular. 

Such  was  the  renowned  "  advice  "  of  the  fore- 


134       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

most  preachers  of  New  England  to  its  representa- 
tive lawyers.  Are  the  principles  here  announced 
more  bitter  than  the  practices  of  that  bar  to  which 
they  were  sent  ?  Did  they  aggravate  the  existing 
frenzy  ?  Did  they  not  rather  by  every  paragraph, 
except  the  last  and  those  written  for  the  sake  of 
courtesy,  —  by  every  paragraph  protest  against  the 
legalized  excess  of  the  day  ?  It  wrongs  the  minis- 
try of  New  England  to  lay  upon  them  a  heavy  bur- 
den of  blame  for  the  agonies  that  were  then 
endured.  They  believed  in  witchcraft,  it  is  true ; 
but  they  always  lifted  their  voices  for  moderation 
and  kindness. 

Cotton  Mather  himself,  who  has  been  called  the 
"  prime  instigator  "  of  those  gloomy  prosecutions, 
was  the  author  of  this  advice  from  the  ministers. 
In  a  long  letter  written  by  him,  May  31,  1692,  to 
John  Richards,  one  of  the  judges,  before  the  first 
sentence  of  death  had  been  pronounced,  he  "  most 
humbly  begs  him  in  the  management  of  the  affair, 
not  to  lay  more  stresse  upon  pure  spectre  testi- 
mony than  it  will  bear,"  saying,  "  It  is  very  certain, 
that  the  divells  have  sometimes  represented  the 
shapes  of  persons  not  onely  innocent,  but  also  very 
vertuous."  He  was  even  afraid  of  being  accused 
as  an  apologist  of  the  sin.  "  Perhaps  there  are  wise 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.       135 

and  good  men,  that  may  be  ready  to  stile  him,  that 
shall  advance  this  caution,  A  Witch  Advocate;  but,  in 
the  winding  up,  this  caution  will  certainly  be  wished 
for."  Devoutely  it  was  wished  in  "  the  winding  up  " 
that  it  had  been  heeded ! 

And  he  even  advanced  the  almost  heretical 
notion,  that  a  plain  confession  may  not  prove  the 
confessor  a  witch.  "  A  person  of  a  sagacity  many 
times  thirty  furlongs  lesse  than  yours,  will  easily 
preceive  what  confession  may  be  credible,  and 
what  may  be  the  result  of  only  a  delirious  brain  or 
a  discontented  heart."  No  custom  was  more  com- 
mon than  to  test  the  accused,  by  requiring  him  to 
repeat  the  Lord's  Prayer.  If  he  made  the  slightest 
slip,  it  was  counted  as  evidence  against  him.  In 
the  preliminary  trials,  one  had  stood  the  embarass- 
ing  test  perfectly,  except  that  she  had  said  unwit- 
tingly, "  Deliver  us  from  a// evil."  Here  was  sup- 
posed to  be  a  petition  designedly  perverted  to  in- 
clude the  punishment  to  which  she  was  justly 
exposed.  In  another  attempt,  she  blundered  more 
impiously,  saying,  "  Our  Fatherwhich  art  in  heaven, 
hollowed  be  thy  name ; "  a  petition  that  God's 
name  might  be  void  and  dishonored,  and  "  so  .a 
curse  rather  than  a  prayer."  But  Cotton  Mather 
said  of  this  experiment,  "  Make  no  evidence  of  it, 


136       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

but  onely  use  it  for  confounding  the  lisping  witches 
to  give  a  reason  why  they  cannot,  even  with  prompt- 
ing, repeat  those  heavenly  composures."  He  goes 
one  step  farther,  and  suggests  a  venturesome  notion 
for  his  day,  saying  this  :  "  It  is  worth  considering 
whether  there  be  a  necessity  alwayes  by  exterpac- 
cons  by  halter  or  fagott  (to  punish)  every  wretched 
creature  that  shall  be  hooked  into  some  degrees  of 
witchcraft ;  what  if  some  of  the  lesser  criminalls  be 
onely  scourged  with  lesser  punishments  ? " 

This  invaluable  letter,  which  has  come  to  light  in 
a  recent  publication  of  the  Massachusetts  Histori- 
cal Society,  shows  conclusively  that  the  reverend 
author  was  not  a  hard-hearted  fanatic,  but  an  ear- 
nest, thoughtful  seeker  for  a  bloodless  deliverance 
from  the  impending  fury. 

Thirty  years  after,  we  find  him  still  in  advance  of 
his  age,  advocating,  at  the  risk  of  his  life,  the  practice 
of  inoculation  as  a  safeguard  against  small-pox. 
So  odious  was  this  reform  to  the  medical  world, 
that  one  man,  at  least,  became  his  mortal  foe.  He 
threw  into  his  room  a  hand-grenade,  which  would 
certainly  have  killed  him,  had  it  chanced  to  ex- 
plode. 

But  his  indefatigable  pen,  which,  before  he  died, 
had  written  382  books,  wrote  on  unchecked.  This 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        137 

resolute  sentiment  was  then  inscribed  :  "  A  spiteful 
town  and  poisoned  country  can't  extinguish  my 
poor  studies  to  do  good  in  the  world  !  "  Says  Mr. 
Poole,  "  The  ministers  generally,  and  he  espe- 
cially, favored  inoculation,  basing  their  arguments 
on  medical  science.  The  doctors,  with  one  excep- 
tion, opposed  it  with  the  utmost  vehemence,  on 
theological  grounds.  The  ministers  and  the 
lawyers  had  stood  in  about  this  relation  respecting 
the  legality  of  witch  trials." 

The  delicate  sense  of  Mr.  Longfellow,  whose  me- 
lodious verse  suggested  this  little  book,  discerned, 
among  the  first  of  modern  scholars,  the  real  truth 
about  Mather's  relation  to  witchcraft.  The  words 
he  put  into  the  mouth  of  this  remarkable  man  are 
not  sharp  and  bloody  words,  but  those  which  are 
eloquent  with  great  compassion  and  grief. 

The  frequent  journeys  which  he  made  at  that  time 
from  Boston  to  Salem  were  designed  for  the  tender 
ministrations  of  the  prison-cell,  and  not  to  goad 
on  the  attorneys  of  judgment.  Their  pace  was  too 
swift  for  him  already ;  and  we  have  the  most  affect- 
ing evidence  that  he  was  often  welcomed  to  the 
dungeons  of  the  doomed. 

But  we  do  not  claim  for  the  author  of  "  Wonders 
of  the  Invisible  World  "  exemption  from  the  com- 


138       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

mon  delusion.  If  he  was  more  kind,  he  was  also 
more  credulous,  than  most  of  his  time.  He  be- 
lieved that  devils  were  actually  abroad  in  many  a 
tangible  human  frame.  This  business,  he  wrote, 
though  "  managed  in  imagination,  yet  may  not  be 
called  imaginary.  The  effects  are  dreadfully  reall. 
Our  deare  neighbours  are  most  really  tormented, 
really  murdered,  and  really  acquainted  with  hidden 
things,  which  are  afterwards  proved  plainly  to  have 
been  realityes." 

But  is  it  wise  for  us  of  to-day  to  laugh  at  the 
notion  that  there  was  any  thing  mysterious  in 
those  appalling  scenes  ?  A  merry  old  English  judge 
might  dispose  of  a  crazy  and  scared  wretch,  who 
was  pronounced  a  witch  because  of  the  romantic 
fact  that  she  had  ridden  a  broomstick  through 
the  air,  with  such  a  happy  sentence  as  this : 
"  That  she  was  free  to  go,  and  to  ride  broom- 
sticks as  often  as  she  pleased ;  for  he  knew  no 
law  against  it " !  But  here  was  something  more 
than  broomsticks  and  aerial  journeys.  Preternat- 
ural events  were  exhibited  daily  before  the  eyes  of 
multitudes  of  sensible  and  honest  people.  No 
doubt  there  was  much  fraud  and  mischief  mingled 
in  with  these  manoeuvres,  especially  of  the  girls; 
but,  sifting  this  completely  out  by  rigid  research,  will 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        139 

there  not  still  remain  a  residuum  of  unexplained 
mystery  ? 

A  contemporary  author,  whom  Mr.  Chandler 
quotes  approvingly,  cannot  be  charged  with  great 
extravagance  in  the  following  assumption  :  "  Flashy 
people  may  burlesque  these  things  ;  but  when  hun- 
dreds of  the  most  sober  people,  in  a  country  where 
they  have  as  much  mother-wit  certainly  as  the  rest 
of  mankind,  know  them  to  be  true,  nothing  but  the 
absurd  and  froward  spirit  of  Sadducism  can  ques- 
tion them." 

It  is  a  doctrine  of  calm  philosophy,  that  the 
spiritual  and  natural  worlds,  acting  and  re-acting 
upon  each  other,  are  separated  by  the  thinnest  veil. 
While  enthusiasm  alone  credits  all  the  marvels 
which  fly  to  our  ears,  that  is  a  stolid  mind  which 
denies  the  existence  of  every  thing  it  is  not  able  to 
fathom.  Would  not  men  be  better  to  believe  in  all 
the  sprites  that  have  peopled  the  realm  of  fancy, 
rather  than  to  believe  that  there  is  nothing  in  the 
universe  but  dust  ?  When  our  senses  are  shut, 
there  is  a  world  to  be  observed,  which  is  beyond 
the  senses  when  they  are  keen-sighted  and  awake. 
With  the  glad  vision  of  eyeless  Milton,  we  rejoice 
to  find  companions  in  every  solitude.  It  is  a  beau- 
tiful thought,  — 


140       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

"  Millions  of  spiritual  creatures  walk  the  earth 
Unseen,  both  when  we  wake  and  when  we  sleep." 

In  the  last  week  of  June  the  court  met  again  : 
five  were  tried  and  convicted  at  this  session. 
They  were  all  hanged  July  19.  One  of  these 
was  Rebecca  Nourse.  Her  distinguished  virtues 
and  saint-like  bearing  staggered  the  jurors,  as  they 
had  the  magistrates  before.  In  spite  of  the  mon- 
strous testimony  of  the  accusers,  the  clamors  of  the 
outside  crowd,  and  the  bias  of  the  court  itself,  they 
brought  in  a  verdict  of  "  Not  guilty."  The  wrest- 
ing of  judgment  at  this  point  seems  amazing  to  us. 
Immediately  all  the  children  and  others  afflicted, 
within  and  without  the  court,  set  up  a  hideous  out- 
cry, and  wallowed  in  horrible  antics.  One  judge  ex- 
pressed himself  dissatisfied,  then  another.  Then  the 
chief-justice,  who,  though  a  man  of  rectitude,  always 
seemed  to  be  bent  on  convictions,  suggested  that 
one  petty  item  of  testimony  had  not  been  duly  con- 
sidered, and  sent  the  jury  out  again:  they  returned 
with  a  verdict  of  "  Guilty."  Surely  justice  had  fled 
from  that  court. 

There  is  a  tradition,  that  the  body  of  this  poor 
woman  was  sought  out,  under  the  secrecy  of  night, 
and  borne  in  tender  arms  across  the  fields  to  the 
burial-plot  next  her  own  home.  Her  sunken  grave 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        141 

still  is  pointed  out,  and  the  oaken  house  in  which 
she  lived  still  stands. 

On  the  5th  of  August,  six  were  tried  and  con- 
demned. These  were  all  executed  on  the  igth, 
excepting  one.  Rev.  George  Burroughs,  John 
Proctor,  and  George  Jacobs,  Sen.,  were  among  this 
ill-fated  band. 

Mr.  Burroughs  was  condemned  for  "  certain  de- 
testable arts,  called  witchcraft  and  sorceries,  by 
which  Anne  Putnam  was  and  is  tortured,  af- 
flicted, pined,  consumed,  wasted,  and  tormented." 
At  times  the  children  appeared  to  be  struck  dumb 
by  his  malign  power.  "What  hinders  these  wit- 
nesses," demanded  Stoughton,  "  from  giving  their 
testimony  ? "  "I  suppose  the  devil,"  Burroughs 
replied.  "  How  comes  the  devil,"  was  the  grim 
retort,  "  so  loath  to  have  any  testimony  borne 
against  you  ?  "  He  had  murdered  his  two  wives, 
who  had  already  died,  and  also  the  wife  and 
daughter  of  Lawson,  his  successor  as  village-pastor. 
The  man  was  thunderstruck  at  such  unheard- 
of  lies.  Said  Ann,  "  One  wife  he  stabbed  under 
her  left  arm,  and  put  a  piece  of  sealing-wax  on  the 
wound  ;  and  she  pulled  aside  the  winding-sheet,  and 
showed  me  the  place  " !  He  was  chaplain  at  the 
diabolical  banquets  of  the  time.  And  with  these 


142        THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

spectral  fancies  were  also  mingled  strange  stories 
about  his  monstrous  strength,  "  being  a  little  man." 
He  had  "  lifted  a  gun  of  six-foot  barrel,  putting  the 
fore-finger  of  his  right  hand  into  the  muzzle  of  said 
gun,"  and  holding  it  out  at  arms'  length,  "  only  with 
that  finger."  He  had  also  taken  up  "a  full 
barrel  of  molasses  with  but  two  of  the  fingers  of  one 
of  his  hands  in  the  bung,"  and  carried  it  "  from  the 
stage-head  to  the  door  at  the  end  of  the  stage."  It 
is  doubtful  whether  he  was  condemned  for  murder 
or  for  lifting  a  "barrel  of  molasses." 

In  company  with  others  he  rode  in  a  cart  to  the 
fatal  hill.  Upon  the  ladder  he  made  a  calm  and 
powerful  address,  refuting  the  folly  of  the  day 
"  with  such  solemn  and  serious  expressions  as  were 
the  admiration  of  all  present."  He  then  offered 
up  a  wonderful  prayer,  concluding  with  the  Lord's 
prayer,  which  he  repeated  correctly  with  thrilling 
intonations.  Such  was  his  "  fervency  of  spirit," 
that  many  were  affected  to  tears,  and  were  at  one 
time  resolved  to  prevent  the  execution.  But,  at 
this  moment,  "  the  accusers  said  the  black  man 
stood  by  and  dictated  to  him  ; "  and  so  the  rising 
sympathy  was  quelled,  and  the  man  of  God  went  to 
his  long  home. 

It  was  well  known  that  a  confession  of  witchcraft, 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.       143 

and  a  formal  renunciation  of  it,  would  clear  the 
accused  from  its  fatal  consequences  :  those  only 
who  denied  their  guilt  were  obdurate  wretches  ; 
others  relenting  were  released.  "  More  than  one 
twenty  confessed  that  they  had  signed  unto  a  book 
which  the  devil  showed  them,  and  engaged  in  his 
hellish  design  of  bewitching  and  ruining  our  land." 
Now,  we  need  not  assume  that  these  confessions 
were  the  result  solely  of  the  instinct  of  self-preser- 
vation. They  were  not  all  deliberate  falsehoods. 
In  that  dread  storm  of  delusion,  when  masses  of 
horror  hung  like  inky  clouds  over  every  home,  and 
a  thousand  preternatural  sounds  reverberated  in 
every  ear;  when  a  wife  and  a  daughter  beloved 
could  accuse  the  husband  and  father  of  the  accursed 
sin,  and  nearest  and  dearest  friends  —  as  was  ac- 
tually the  case  in  several  instances  —  were  the 
most  positive  in  their  charges,  especially  when 
summoned  to  confront  at  the  court  a  multitude  of 
faces,  pale  with  fury  or  with  fright,  and  to  account 
for  the  more  appalling  and  ghastly  antics  of  the 
girls,  —  it  is  more  than  probable  that  some  were  self- 
deceived,  and  really  believed  that  they  were  agents 
of  the  diabolical  powers.  But  still  more  honor  is 
due  to  those  who  stood  firm  in  such  a  trial.  They 
proved  themselves  possessors  of  minds  that  were 


144       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

wise  and  strongly  poised,  and  of  characters  that 
were  truly  sublime.  The  men  who  steadily  refused 
to  take  that  lie  upon  their  lips  earned  well  the 
name  of  martyrs,  —  noble  martyrs  to  the  very  spirit 
of  truth.  Witch  Hill  is  the  Smithfield  of  America. 
A  petition,  signed  by  a  great  majority  of  the 
neighbors  of  Proctor,  was  presented  at  court  in 
his  behalf :  it  is  evidence  to  show  that  the  severities 
of  the  prosecutions  are  chargeable,  not  more  upon 
the  community  of  Salem  than  upon  the  government 
at  large.  He  never  would  have  been  condemned 
had  their  will  had  its  way.  Mr.  Proctor  wrote  a 
letter  from  his  prison-cell  to  five  of  the  most  prom- 
inent clergymen  in  the  State,  imploring  their  in- 
tervention for  a  new  trial,  and  a  change  of  magis- 
trates. These  clergymen  were  known  to  be 
opposed  to  the  excesses  of  the  prosecutions.  In- 
crease Mather  was  supposed,  in  heart,  to 
disapprove  them  altogether.  Samuel  Williard,  of 
the  Old  South  Church  in  Boston,  "  one  of  the  most 
revered  and  beloved  ministers  in  the  land,"  was  so 
notable  in  his  opposition  to  them,  that  the  "  afflicted 
children  "  actually  began  to  "  cry  out  upon  "  him. 
They  were  speedily  hushed  by  the  incredulous 
court.  "  Indeed,"  says  Mr.  Upham,  "  the  truth  is, 
that  the  judges,  magistrates,  and  legislature  were 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        145 

as  much  to  blame  in  this  whole  business  as  the 
ministers,  and  much  more  slow  to  come  to  their 
senses  and  make  amends  for  their  wrong-doing." 

During  September,  fifteen  were  tried  and  con- 
victed :  eight  of  these  were  executed  Sept. 
22.  Rev.  Mr.  Noyes,  of  the  First  Church  in 
Salem,  turning  to  the  strangled  bodies,  is  repre- 
sented to  have  said,  "  What  a  sad  thing  it  is  to  see 
eight  firebrands  of  hell  hanging  there  !  "  It  was  the 
last  time  that  his  eyes  were  pained  by  such  a  sight. 

Three  days  before,  old  Giles  Corey  had  suffered 
a  fate  that  shocked  the  hearts  of  all  good  men. 
He  had  refused  to  plead  to  his  indictment,  and  so 
was  pressed  to  death. 

His  object  in  this  refusal  was  to  prevent  a  trial. 
He  knew  it  could  issue  in  nothing  but  a  conviction. 
It  would  certainly  fasten  upon  his  name  the  stigma 
of  a  felony  :  it  would  forfeit  the  right  of  his  chil- 
dren to  his  estates. 

During  the  time  of  his  imprisonment,  waves  of 
painful  remembrance  had  rolled  upon  his  soul. 
His  life,  he  thought,  had  issued  in  little  good  ;  he 
had  been  always  misunderstood  ;  his  influence  had 
been  all  wrong,  though  his  heart  was  often  right. 
Since  his  conversion,  there  had  not  been  time 
enough  to  approve  the  sincerity  of  his  new  profes- 


146       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

sion.  And  then  that  martyred  wife  !  Though  he 
had  never  been  opposed  to  her  personally,  yet  the 
delusion  to  which  he  had  at  first  lent  himself  so 
violently  had  swept  her  away.  Two  of  his  sons- 
in-law  turned  against  her  in  that  hour  of  her  ex- 
tremity. With  unnatural  hearts,  they  even  urged 
her  conviction.  Sadly  musing  on  all  these  facts, 
his  mind  gradually  settled  upon  a  lofty  resolve. 
He  determined  to  expiate  his  errors  by  a  deed  that 
would  challenge  the  respect  of  his  fellow-men,  and 
that  would  perhaps,  with  an  irresistible  voice, 
rebuke  the  iniquitous  court :  at  least,  it  would  save 
his  property  to  his  children.  Forthwith  he  caused 
a  deed  to  be  drawn  up  in  the  prison.  It  was  done 
with  the  utmost  formality,  to  make  certain  the  effect. 
It  conveyed  to  Cleaves  and  Moulton,  the  two  sons 
who  had  been  true  to  his  wife,  his  entire  estate  of 
"  movables  and  lands."  It  was  signed  and  sealed 
in  the  presence  of  competent  witnesses,  and  duly 
recorded  as  a  complete  transaction.  Then  he  was 
ready  to  attest  his  determination  not  to  break  this 
instrument  by  the  attainder  of  a  felon's  death. 
He  made  up  his  mind  not  to  be  tried. 

He  was  summoned  before  the  court  to  plead  to 
his  indictment,  "  Guilty,"  or  "  Not  Guilty."  He  ut- 
tered not  one  word  in  reply.  There  he  stood  mute 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        147 

as  a  stone  :  and  no  power  upon  the  earth  could 
unseal  his  iron  lips.  To  have  pleaded  would  have 
recognized  the  legality  of  that  tribunal,  and  have 
made  him,  in  some  sense,  a  party  to  their  proceed- 
ings. They  represented  the  passions  of  the  de- 
luded multitude.  He  defied  their  right  to  give 
judgment.  That  dumb  mouth  spoke  in  thunder- 
tones  of  remonstrance. 

When  Giles  Corey  took  this  immovable  position, 
but  one  course  seemed  open  to  the  court.  The 
usage  in  England  was  to  give  the  recusant  three 
separate  opportunities  to  plead,  each  time  announ- 
cing the  dread  penalty  of  continued  contumacy. 
After  the  third  trial,  if  he  still  remained  speechless, 
he  was  remanded  to  prison,  with  the  sentence  of 
peine  forte  et  dure.  He  would  then  be  thrown  upon 
his  back,  and  weights  of  stone  or  iron  would  be 
piled  upon  him.  There  he  would  be  kept,  some- 
times for  days,  the  weights  gradually  increasing, 
until  the  sufferer  had  consented  to  plead,  or  had 
been  pressed  to  death. 

No  details  of  this  enormity  —  once  only  commit- 
ted in  our  land  —  have  come  from  the  recess  of  that 
prison-cell  in  Salem.  The  rumor  is,  that  the  clos- 
ing scene  of  the  tragedy  was  in  a  secluded  field  near 
by ;  that  the  heroic  man  told  them  it  was  no  use 


148       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

to  expect  him  to  plead,  they  might  as  well  pile  on 
the  rocks  at  once.  And  so  they  did ;  and  so  he 
died,  —  an  old  man  of  more  than  eighty-one 
years,  —  braving  the  utmost  torture  that  the  human 
frame  can  bear,  until  his  body  was  crushed,  and 
his  unconquered  spirit  had  fled  forever  away. 

A  part  of  the  weird  ditty  quoted  before  refers 
to  this  heroic  death :  — 

"  Giles  Corey  was  a  wizzard  strong, 
A  stubborn  wretch  was  he  ; 
And  fitt  was  he  to  hang  on  high 
Upon  y6  Locust  Tree. 

So  when  before  y6  Magistrates 
For  tryall  he  did  come, 
He  would  no  true  confession  make, 
But  was  compleately  dumbe. 

'  Giles  Corey,'  said  y6  magistrate, 
'  What  hast  thou  heare  to  pleade 
To  these  who  now  accuse  thy  soule 
Of  Crymes  and  horrid  deed  ? ' 

Giles  Corey,  he  sayde  not  a  word  : 
No  single  word  spake  he. 
'  Giles  Corey,'  sayth  ye  magistrate, 
'  We'll  press  it  out  of  thee.' 

They  got  them  then  a  heavy  beam ; 
They  layde  it  on  his  breast ; 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        149 

They  loaded  it  with  heavy  stones ; 
And  hard  upon  him  prest. 

'  More  weight,'  now  sayd  this  wretched  man  : 
4  More  weight,'  again  he  cryed. 
And  he  did  no  confession  make  ; 
But  wickedlie  he  dyed." 

This  horrible  event  was  one  of  the  last  acts  in 
the  tragedy.  It  was  too  much  for  a  compassion- 
ate people  longer  to  enact.  At  this  point,  we 
would  that  the  curtain  of  oblivion  might  fall,  and 
hide  the  whole  black  past  from  our  view.  But  the 
hand  of  remorseless  history  drags  it  aside.  We 
must  recognize  that  past  as  a  veritable  transaction 
in  the  annals  of  our  Puritan  State. 

Mr.  Upham  makes  much  of  the  artful  adroitness 
with  which  the  order  of  incidents  was  arranged, 
and  the  supplies  of  excitement  were  furnished  at 
the  critical  moments  throughout.  He  thinks  that 
some  power  behind  the  scenes,  perhaps  in  Ann 
Putnam's  family,  perhaps  Mr.  Parris  himself,  man- 
aged the  dreadful  drama  from  the  beginning.  There 
would  be  reasons  for  such  a  suspicion,  did  it  not 
involve  a  personal  depravity  so  inhuman  as  to  be 
almost  incredible.  There  was,  indeed,  a  sequence 
of  events  calculated  every  way  to  intensify  the 
frenzy. 

'3* 


150       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

But  at  length  the  tide  was  to  turn  :  Reason  was 
to  resume  her  sway.  The  girls,  over-estimating 
their  power,  struck  too  high.  They  could  not  make 
the  people  believe  that  Rev.  Mr.  Williard  was  guilty. 
Then  a  member  of  Increase  Mather's  family  was 
accused.  Then  the  wife  of  Sir  William  Phips 
himself,  was  "  cried  out  upon."  Finally,  the  wife 
of  Rev.  Mr.  Hale  of  Beverly  was  charged  with  the 
crime.  This  act  seemed  to  break  the  spell.  She 
was  a  lady  known  in  all  the  region  round, — one  of 
such  eminent  graces,  that  it  could  not  be  that  she 
was  a  witch.  Mr.  Hale  had  been  a  leading,  and, 
we  believe  on  his  own  confession,  a  sincere  prose- 
cutor ;  but  he  knew  that  his  wife  was  innocent,  and, 
he  turned  at  once  his  powerful  influence  against 
the  current.  The  accusers  had  perjured  themselves : 
this  conviction  spread  suddenly  through  the  com- 
munity. The  people  had  been  duped.  It  was  all 
a  mistake.  Oh  what  a  mistake  !  And  the  wild 
storm  quelled.  In  a  moment  that  mortal  delirium 
was  checked.  The  whole  delusion  vanished. 

Gov.  Phips  saw  that  a  stop  must  be  put  to 
the  prosecutions.  The  Court  of  Oyer  and  Ter- 
miner  met  no  more.  The  Superior  Court,  which 
met  in  January,  1693,  convicted  only  three  out  of 
fifty  indicted.  These  three  escaped  execution. 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        151 

Other  trials  resulted  uniformly  in  acquittal.  In 
May,  the  Govenor,  by  proclamation,  discharged  all 
who  were  imprisoned  for  witchcraft.  "  Such  a  jail- 
delivery  was  never  known  in  New  England."  The 
number  set  at  liberty  was  about  one  hundred  and 
fifty.  Two  had  died  in  prison.  Twenty,  including 
Giles  Corey,  had  been  executed.  Many  had  es- 
caped from  confinement.  In  all,  there  must  have 
been  nearly  three  hundred  arrested  and  committed 
for  this  imaginary  crime. 

The  calamitous  effects  of  the  delusion  were  long 
and  painfully  felt.  Those  pure  and  precious  lives 
could  not  be  recalled  to  earth.  From  many  a 
household,  domestic  happiness  had  forever  fled. 
The  retrospect  indeed  was  fearful.  Gentle  women 
had  been  torn  from  their  families  to  suffer  the 
rigors  of  a  public  trial,  if  not  judicial  death.  La- 
boring men  had  been  arrested  in  their  needful  toils. 
The  industry  of  the  youthful  State  had  been  crip- 
pled. A  whole  summer  had  been  lost  to  the  hus- 
bandmen. Their  fields  had  been  left  unploughed, 
and  they  had  no  harvests  to  gather  in.  The 
excitement  of  the  hour  consumed  every  other 
interest.  It  left  them  destitute  at  its  departure. ' 

Confidence  in  the  safeguards  of  the  community 
had  also  been  disturbed.  The  protecting  hand  of 


152       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

the  General  Court  had  not  defended  the  innocent. 
The  calm  voice  of  science  had  become  an  accuser. 
The  white  ermine  of  justice  had  been  stained  by 
needless  blood.  The  altars  of  our  holy  religion 
had  afforded  no  asylum  to  the  distressed.  Law- 
givers, physicians,  magistrates,  and  ministers,  in- 
stead of  repelling  the  woful  superstition,  had 
united  together  to  strengthen  it.  It  was  not  well 
for  the  various  causes  they  maintained.  There  was 
hardly  one  social  good  which  was  not  injured  by 
the  shock  it  then  received. 

But,  amid  all  that  is  sorrowful  in  this  dark  scene, 
there  are  facts  which  stand  out  in  the  pure  and 
pleasant  light. 

One  is  the  genuine  penitence  of  those  misguided 
men.  It  is  beautiful  to  us.  Most  of  the  girls 
turned  out  ill.  Several  of  them  became  profligates. 
Only  one,  Ann  Putnam,  made  a  confession.  Chief- 
Justice  Stoughton  clung  proudly  to  the  position 
that  his  decisions  were  right  throughout.  Some 
few  of  the  clergymen  contended  to  the  end  of  life 
that  these  were  veritable  "  wonders  of  the  invisible 
world."  Mr.  Parris  was  never  known  to  repent 
the  part  he  performed.  He  was  soon  forced  to 
leave  his  charge  on  account  of  the  prejudice  then 
engendered.  He  died  in  obscurity.  But,  with  these 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        153 

exceptions,  the  rest  of  the  prosecutors  made  most 
honorable  acknowledgments  of  the  injuries  they 
had  done.  Their  expression  of  feeling  was  not 
immediate.  Great  sorrow  sealed  their  lips.  Words, 
they  feared,  would  kindle  the  rage,  rather  than 
soothe  the  grief,  of  those  who  had  suffered  such 
remediless  wrongs.  But  their  action  at  length  was 
unequivocal. 

In  1696,  a  proclamation  for  a  public  fast  was 
issued,  especially  in  view  of  "  the  late  tragedy," 
that  "  God  would  humble  us  therefor,  and  pardon 
all  the  errors  of  his  servants  and  people.  That 
he  would  show  us  what  we  know  not,  and  help  us 
wherein  we  have  done  amiss  to  do  so  no  more." 
It  is  couched  throughout  in  most  affecting  terms. 

Nearly  fifty  years  after,  the  General  Court 
adopted  a  measure,  appointing  a  committee  to  in- 
quire into  the  condition  of  those  families  which 
might  have  suffered  in  "the  calamity  of  1692;" 
reversing  the  attainders,  and  expressing  a  strong 
desire  to  compensate  them  either  by  money  or  a 
township  of  land. 

The  two  churches  which  had  been  most  deeply 
implicated  tearfully  revoked  the  sentences  which 
had  excommunicated  those  convicted  of  witchcraft, 
"  that  they  be  no  longer  a  reproach  to  their  mem- 


154       THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

ory,  and  an  occasion  of  grief  to  their  children." 
They  conducted  with  marked  kindness  towards  the 
surviving  friends.  The  clergymen  of  Essex  County, 
with  but  one  or  two  exceptions,  signed  a  petition, 
begging  that  the  infamy  of  a  criminal  trial  might 
not  rest  on  the  accused,  or  appear  on  the  court- 
records. 

And  the  twelve  jurors,  whose  verdict  had  been 
the  doom  of  so  many  guiltless  persons,  united  in 'a 
declaration,  subscribed  by  them  all,  expressing  their 
grief  for  what  they  had  done.  This  remarkable 
paper  exhibits  the  utmost  tenderness  of  conscience, 
and  asks  forgiveness  of  God  and  men  in  terms  of 
such  heartfelt  contrition  that  it  disarms  our  indig- 
nation altogether. 

But  the  conduct  of  Judge  Sewall  claims  our 
special  admiration  in  this  respect.  Through  his 
whole  life,  after  that  fatal  court,  he  observed  annu- 
ally, in  private,  a  day  of  humiliation  and  prayer,  in 
view  of  his  participation  in  it.  On  the  day  of  the 
general  Fast,  he  rose  in  his  own  pew  in  the  Old 
South,  in  Boston,  and,  before  the  whole  congrega- 
tion, proceeded  to  the  pulpit,  and  handed  the  pastor 
a  written  confession  of  the  wrong  into  which  he  had 
been  led,  and  an  earnest  request  that  his  brethren 
would  unite  with  him  in  devout  supplications  that 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION.        155 

it  might  not  bring  down  the  displeasure  of  God 
upon  his  country,  his  family,  or  himself.  He  re- 
mained standing  during  the  public  reading  of  the 
paper.  Such  an  example  of  noble  penitence  throws 
a  bright  gleam  over  all  that  melancholy  past 

And  now,  may  not  the  descendants  of  a  godly 
ancestry,  while  they  recall  the  melancholy  errors  by 
which  the  Fathers  were  beset,  be  allowed,  in  the 
same  spirit  of  trust  which  distinguished  them,  to 
cherish  the  belief,  that  even  this  tragical  calamity 
was  permitted  for  purposes  of  wisdom  and  benevo- 
lence ?  When  such  a  moral  desolation  sweeps  over 
a  great  society  of  men,  it  does  not  leave  them  with- 
out some  beneficent  results.  The  thunder-storm 
does  its  work  ;  the  atmosphere  is  cleared  ;  the  sun 
shines  forth  at  length,  revealing  not  only  the  spoils 
of  death,  but  the  pure  elements  of  a  better  life. 

And  what  was  God's  good  design  in  permitting 
this  outbreak  of  a  fatal  superstition  ?  For  our 
answer  to  such  an  inquiry,  we  are  pointed  at  once 
to  a  great  fact,  which  soon  became  apparent :  by 
that  very  fury  the  superstition  itself  was  forever  ex- 
ploded. No  gentler  means  than  this,  perhaps,  could 
have  accomplished  such  a  happy  end.  It  may  be, 
that  those  appalling  enormities  were  necessary  to 
drive  out  the  deeply-lodged  error  from  human  be- 


156        THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 

liefs.  We  of  the  present  day  need  not  treat  it  with 
ridicule  or  reproaches.  In  the  seventeenth  century 
it  was  invested  with  an  awful  solemnity.  It  is 
not  for  us  to  denounce  that  generation.  All  de- 
lusion has  not  yet  departed  from  the  earth.  There 
are  false  and  fatal  systems  of  belief  among  many 
men  to-day.  We  pray  that  they  may  not  require 
so  terrible  a  refutation  as  did  this.  But  arguments 
seem  powerless  to  destroy  them.  In  the  well-chosen 
words  of  another,  "  Error  is  seldom  overthrown  by 
mere  reasoning.  It  yields  only  to  the  logic  of 
events."  The  learning  and  wit  of  all  the  world 
combined  could  not  have  rooted  the  witchcraft  su- 
perstition out  of  the  minds  of  men.  A  practical 
demonstration  of  its  deformities  and  horrors,  such 
as  was  held  up  then  to  the  view  of  the  people 
everywhere,  alone  could  give  it  a  death-blow.  This 
was  the  final  cause  of  the  witchcraft  delusion.  It 
makes  it  one  of  the  greatest  landmarks  in  the 
moral  history  of  mankind  It  makes  it  a  fair  and 
trustful  augury  that  God  is  leading  humanity,  by 
every  providence,  out  of  the  gloom  of  ages,  into  the 
cloudless  lustre  of  the  "  golden  year." 


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